


Shipwreck Between Your Ribs

by cherie_morte



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Author Jensen Ackles, Celtic Mythology & Folklore, Depression, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Professor Jensen, Professor Jensen Ackles, Selkies, Suicidal Thoughts, author jensen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-16
Updated: 2017-07-16
Packaged: 2018-12-02 21:45:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 40,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11518119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherie_morte/pseuds/cherie_morte
Summary: AU:All Jensen wanted was a nice month at the beach. What he got was an over-affectionate seal that happens to turn into a hot guy when no one else is around. Jared makes Jensen’s summer better than he ever could have expected, but when his vacation is up and he has to return to the real world, Jensen finds that he's fallen in love with someone who can only truly love the ocean.





	Shipwreck Between Your Ribs

**Author's Note:**

  * For [deirdre_c](https://archiveofourown.org/users/deirdre_c/gifts).



> Written for the 2017 [spn_j2_bigbang](http://spn-j2-bigbang.livejournal.com/). More notes on [LiveJournal](http://infatuated-ink.livejournal.com/103174.html). Please check out the beautiful art by [cassiopeia7](http://cassiopeia7.livejournal.com) [here](http://cassiopeia7.livejournal.com/606449.html), though be warned there are some spoilers!

> There is a shipwreck between your ribs. You are a box with  
>  fragile written on it, and so many people have not handled you  
>  with care.
> 
> And for the first time, I understand that I will never know  
>  how to apologize for being  
>  one of them.
> 
> ― Shinji Moon

  
"See, this is why I can't take you places," Danneel says, crossing her arms over her chest and cocking her hip to the right. She's got that melodramatic voice on, the one that lets Jensen know he is absolutely ruining her life from now until eternity. "This is why I can't take you _anywhere_."

Jensen laughs under his breath, shaking his head and letting himself be distracted by the nearest trinket. He reaches up, fingers skimming through the strings and creating a soft tinkling music as the bells begin to knock together. "What do you think of this one?"

Danneel groans. "I think it's a wind chime, Jensen. I think everything in this godforsaken hut is a wind chime. Just like it all has been for the last forty-five minutes. I think you need to hurry up and decide which particular wind chime that you don't need you would like to buy so we can get the hell out of here before I strangle us both with my purse straps."

"But this one is made of a different wood than the others," he points out, grinning when she flat-out hisses at the response. "C'mon, Dani. It's local art. If we're gonna be dicking around here for the next month, we should at least support the neighborhood businesses."

"Okay, sure," she says. "But does it have to be the first thing we do? While the sun is still up? Can't we be supportive once I'm a bronze goddess and you're—I don't know, crying because you have a sunburn, or whatever happens when you go out in the sun? Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever seen you try. Are you stalling? Is this stalling?"

"You have a month to tan," he reminds her, deciding that this is not the chime for him and turning his attention back to his friend. "I want to learn the local flavor as soon as possible. Get the inside scoop. Then we can sleep on the beach all day and actually know where the fuck to go at night for the rest of the summer, not get suckered in like the tourists we are."

"Wind chimes hardly constitute night life." Danneel shakes her head mournfully. "That's just shitty detective work. Never write a mystery, okay?"

"Noted." Jensen moves on to the next corner of the store.

He hears Danneel's put-upon sigh and watches as she makes a very big show of dragging herself after him. "How are there still parts of this place you haven't seen yet? I've been around six times, and that was in the first fifteen minutes."

"You aren't paying proper attention to detail," Jensen says.

"If we go to the beach, I promise not to complain if you want to count every single grain of sand. How's that for attention to detail?"

"Wow," he says, stopping in front of one of the displays tucked away in the corner. "Look at this one."

He takes it delicately off the hook and turns, holding it just in front of his chest. Danneel rolls her eyes, but she's smiling, too. "It's green, Jensen. Very pretty. Matches your eyes, must be fate. Can we go now?"

"It's beautiful," he says, hoisting it up to eye level and inspecting it. The chime is less kitschy than most of the others in the store, broken glass ascending like a spiral staircase and dangling on fishing line instead of string. The music it makes when it moves in his grasp is like an enchantment. It forces Jensen to stop and listen, spellbound for a few seconds until it settles, leaving him longing to hear it again. It's more attractive than the rest, but there's something else about it.

"Yeah," Danneel says, cutting into the haze the chime created. "Real nice! You should buy it. And then we should leave."

He nods. This is definitely the chime for him, and he _has_ held Danneel hostage about as long as anyone can ask of a friend.

They walk it to the front of the store, Jensen's eyes locked on the chime all the while. Danneel doesn't seem to be as taken with the music—or taken at all, really—but her mood improves once she realizes the end is in sight, and her complaining turns to good-natured teasing.

"An hour of my vacation in a wind chime store," she's muttering as they look for the register. "I mean, there's gay and then there's Jensen gay."

"That's good," Jensen says. "I should start a business. JensenGay™."

"Mmmhmm," Danneel agrees. "And what kind of services would your company provide?"

Jensen waggles his eyebrows, and Danneel cracks up.

"Stick to writing, love. No one's gonna pay for you to hang around if this is the kind of thing that gets your blood pumping." She reaches out, her finger running thoughtlessly through the wire on Jensen's chime and creating a cacophony of sound. "Now where the hell do we pay for this thing?"

"I can help you. We don't get enough traffic for a register."

Seemingly out of nowhere, an old woman has appeared in the doorway. She's sitting down at the little chair they passed on their way in, her lap full of fishing net like she's been settled there for a while, but Jensen would swear he didn't see her when they entered or even just a few seconds ago when he was looking around.

He glances at Danneel, who just shrugs, though her expression is as confused as Jensen feels.

"Do you make these?" he asks, handing her the chime so she can wrap it up. "You're very talented."

"Yes, I do," she says, looking up at him. "And thank you."

The woman seems ancient, but not just in age. Her skin is tough as leather, sun-beaten and wrinkled, and her hair is pulled back into a tight bun, long stripes ranging from white to dark grey like waves leaving imprints on sand. Her eyes shift like water, too, somewhere between blue and green, but her gaze doesn't. Jensen feels weirdly exposed, like she's seeing all the way into him. She holds Jensen's stare, and he has the bizarre thought that she's kind of strikingly gorgeous.

Whatever she sees makes her smile faintly as she looks back down at the chime in her hands. Jensen watches as she turns the package over to wrap it, oddly swift for someone her age. Then she holds it out to him, and when Jensen takes the chime from her, he's surprised to see identical tattoos covering the palms of both her hands. Seven-pointed stars, the lines all looping through each other and tangling like the ropes on her lap.

There are matching scars, too, running up the length of each of her arms in clean, straight lines. They look deep, deep enough that Jensen's surprised they weren't fatal. Somehow they seem to be both old and still open, though he's sure that's his eyes playing tricks on him. Surely they'd be bleeding if they were fresh.

"Uh, thank you," Jensen says once he realizes he's been staring. The woman lifts an eyebrow, but she doesn't say anything else. "How much do I owe you?"

She blinks a few times, like the question caught her off guard, then shakes her head. "I think you need it more than I need your money."

Jensen hesitates. "I really would rather—"

The woman looks very sad all of a sudden. She reaches out and puts her hands over one of Jensen's, squeezing as she says, "You're very lonely, aren't you?"

"What?" Jensen kind of laughs, his eyes darting to Danneel. "I'm—no? I'm not lonely, ma'am. Just on vacation."

The woman is hearing none of it, apparently. She smiles like she doesn't believe him, patting his hand a few times before letting go. "Lonely boys like you get girls like me in trouble, Jensen."

He tries to remember if he told her his name; Danneel laughs and cuts in. "He won't be getting any girls in trouble," she promises, pushing Jensen out toward the street. "Nice meeting you!"

Jensen tries to make sense of the encounter for a full half minute once they get back on the road, but finally he gives up. "That was weird, right? Like really weird?"

"A little weird," Danneel admits, putting on her sunglasses and shrugging. She's clearly too excited to care much right now. "Must have heard me say your name or something."

Jensen nods, like that explains it, and tries not to linger on the rest of what she said. He's not lonely. He's perfectly content, and he doesn't need some stranger telling him otherwise.

_______________________________________________________________

"Hey, Jen. Look at that."

Jensen awakes from a rather pleasant doze on the beach with a finger jabbing into his side. He makes a whiny noise and refuses to lift his head. He's comfortable, dammit.

"Leavmelone," he mutters into his arms.

Danneel persists, poking him again. Maybe this is revenge for the wind chime thing. Jensen should have known he'd gotten off too easy. "No, seriously. _Look_."

Grudgingly, Jensen turns over and blinks his eyes open, nearly giving a shout when he realizes what Danneel was trying to bring to his attention. He covers his mouth before he lets the sound out, hoping not to startle the seal that is a few inches away from his toes, sniffing curiously.

"Oh my god," he half-whispers. "What the hell?"

Okay, granted, seals on a beach are not the weirdest thing he's ever seen, and it's not like he didn't know there was a pretty large population of them in the area. Jensen and Danneel had even made plans to go see them, maybe later today or tomorrow if it got dark. Most of them live on the opposite side of the pier, where it's more nature preserve than tourist beach, but it's not completely unheard of for some to swim on shore near beachgoers. Or at least that's what the pamphlet Jensen read while they were choosing a place to spend their vacation said.

It also said they were shy around humans, though. That they would probably not get close to anyone and no one should try to approach them in order to prevent violent reactions of territorialism. If this thing is territorial about anything right now, it's Jensen's leg.

The seal lifts its head when Jensen speaks, tilting it to the right as if it's trying to understand him, and then crawls a few feet forward, pushing its face against Jensen's calf.

"Uh, hi?" Jensen tries, not moving for fear of spooking the little guy.

Well, little guy, no. This thing is fucking huge, actually. It's probably longer than Jensen stretched out, and Jensen would think it was a small whale if it wasn't dragging itself through sand on flippers right now.

The seal is covered in dark brown fur, slick from the water, and it has little dots of darker brown dappled across its face and back almost like a person might.

It stares up at Jensen with unexpectedly intelligent eyes, gaze unblinking like it's trying to ask for something important, and it kind of makes Jensen uncomfortable. The seal is cute, no doubt about it, but Jensen's not sure what it wants.

He tries to remember if he's got animal crackers or something in the pockets of his trunks, then remembers he hasn't eaten animal crackers since he was six, so why would he have any in his pants?

"What do I do?" he whispers to Danneel.

She shrugs. "I dunno. But do something, 'cause people are starting to notice."

Jensen looks around and feels himself flushing as he realizes that she's right. There's a small group of kids huddled a few feet away, buckets and shovels abandoned or hanging limply from their hands, a few nervous-looking parents, and one douche in a Hawaiian t-shirt with a video camera and a smile on his face like this is the best thing he's ever seen.

The seal is either ignoring the attention or basking in it. It crawls forward even more, its big body flopping _over_ Jensen's legs.

"He wants you to pet him, mister," says one of the kids in the group. "That's what Pepper does when she wants a belly rub."

Jensen looks up at the kid, a boy about seven or eight with bright carrot-colored hair and freckles covering most of his face and body. Beside him, his two equally orange siblings, a boy and a girl who might be a year or two younger and could be twins, nod seriously.

"He's right," the girl confirms. "That is what Pepper does."

Not sure if it's a good idea, Jensen turns to Danneel. "Should I? Do you think it'll bite me? Is seal rabies a thing?"

"Hmm. Let me consult my degree in sealology," Danneel says, giving Jensen a flat look. "Just try it. What's the worst that could happen?"

It could bite Jensen's hand off, probably. He tries not to think of all the kid's movies about penguins he's taken his nieces and nephews to see over the years and how the seals were generally the bad guys. That one from _Happy Feet_ had featured in at least one of Jensen's nightmares, and he can't help thinking that his arm would probably be a lot easier to swallow than a penguin.

By now, the seal is practically lying on top of Jensen, sniffing at his chest and face, its big fatty body rolling as it tries to flop around for a better angle. It looks more silly than dangerous, and Jensen decides, fuck it, if it wanted to eat him he would probably be maimed by now.

The seal is surprisingly fluffy under his palm, its fur beginning to dry and bunch between his fingers as he rubs it, almost like a dog's. The seal seems to be loving the touch. It starts making honking sounds and rolls onto its back, its flippers clapping excitedly against its big belly. It _is_ kind of like a giant sea dog, Jensen decides, giving it a few good pats.

The kids crowd closer.

"Can we play with him, too?" the boy asks.

Jensen shakes his head. "I don't know if it's safe to—"

Unsurprisingly, no one listens to him. Four or five children flood in, approaching the seal, all of them falling to their knees in a circle to pet it. Jensen tenses up, not wanting them to make it nervous, because god knows how it'll react to a mob like this. Jensen would probably panic and bite something if he was a seal. But this seal endures their attention patiently. It's not until Jensen tries to detach himself from the spectacle that it seems to get anxious and begins making anguished sounds, squirming to press its body up against Jensen's side.

"Hey, it's okay, buddy," Jensen tells it soothingly. "I won't go anywhere."

That makes the seal relax, and Jensen's heart clenches. He points down and looks at Danneel. "Did you see that? Dani, look, it likes me."

"Oh no," she replies, shaking her head. "No, no, no. We are not adopting a seal."

Jensen pouts, not sure why she would just assume that's what he was thinking. It's not like he has a track record with this kind of thing. Okay, Icarus and Oscar don't count. He didn’t even get to keep them.

"I know we're not adopting it!" he replies. "How would we even get it home?"

Danneel raises an eyebrow and crosses her arms over her chest but says nothing, clearly not wanting to give Jensen any ideas. Damn.

After a while, the excitement wears off. For the kids, at least. Not for the seal. They all grow bored once their parents have snapped enough pictures, and they go back to their sandcastle building and swimming. The sun begins to set, most tourists clearing off the beach, and Jensen realizes he hasn't eaten since breakfast.

"I'm hungry," he says. "You ready to leave soon?"

"Won't be catching anymore sun today," Danneel says with a nod. "I'm game to leave if you think you can break his heart."

She angles her head down at the seal, and Jensen laughs. It's been attached to him for so many hours that he'd kind of forgotten it was there, having long since grown accustomed to the fishy, salty scent and the occasional need to rearrange a limb that's fallen asleep.

He gives it a few last goodbye pats and tries to shove the heavy body off of his enough to rise. "It was nice meeting you," he tells the seal. "But I have to go get some grub, you know? We can't all just jump in the water and catch a fish."

The seal does not budge until finally Jensen's nerves overcome his desire to not piss it off, and he really starts pushing at it with all his strength. The seal doesn't quite get up then, but it does lift its head and turn itself so that it's looking up at Jensen upside down. It draws closer, like it's angling for a kiss, and Jensen laughs, rubbing his nose against the seal's affectionately.

The seal's response is instantaneous. It takes off for the water immediately after, arfing cheerfully all the way. If Danneel didn't have the same dazed 'did that really just happen?' expression on her face, Jensen would swear he fell asleep on the sand and imagined the whole thing. They share delighted grins for a couple of seconds, laughing at the whole crazy experience for the next few hours, and Jensen thinks that's that.

The seal is back the next day. And the day after. Pretty much every day Jensen and Danneel go to the beach, the seal finds them, crawling up to Jensen like it has a homing beacon on him. It's bizarre—Jensen certainly didn't anticipate spending the first week of his vacation being routinely hit on by a seal—but he'd be lying if he said it's not kind of his favorite part of this vacation so far.

"There's no way that's good for him," Danneel says, looking over at Jensen from under the brim of a wide sunhat.

Jensen shrugs. "Sammy loves Gummy Worms," he says, tossing a red and blue into the seal's open mouth before biting down on a green and yellow. "Who am I to tell him how to live his life?"

He'd decided to name the seal on day two and had gone with Sam thanks to Danneel's suggestion that he pick a name that's gender neutral. He has a feeling Sam's a boy, though, and the seal obviously isn't complaining about being called 'he.'

"You're probably going to get us kicked off the beach and banned," she mumbles, turning back to her book. "He's probably going to die tomorrow from all the processed sugar."

"If they were going to say something about it, they would have days ago." Jensen chews his sugar rush contentedly and gives his seal a fond look. "No more candy for you. Your parents probably hate me."

"Don't you think it's weird enough that a seal has a crush on you without leading the poor thing on with all this talk of meeting the parents?"

"He does _not_ have a crush on me," Jensen insists. Sam stares up at him with wide, pleading eyes, and Jensen shakes his head, sneaking him one more Gummy Worm. "He's using me for candy."

"Good that you've accepted it," Danneel says before losing interest in both Jensen and his new friend.

The seal butts his head into Jensen's ribcage and lies down at his side, and Jensen smiles to himself. It's true that Sam has been even friendlier toward Jensen since the day he crept up while both Jensen and Danneel were napping and got a taste for the Gummy Worms Jensen had brought as a snack, but Jensen knows the seal came seeking him before the candy and would probably hang around even if Jensen did put his foot down and stop sharing.

He watches Sam chew for a few moments, feeling the grin he can't keep off his face spreading.

"We're not kidnapping a seal," Danneel reminds him without looking up. "Not even if it wants to be kidnapped."

Jensen scowls. She shouldn't be able to read his mind, especially when she's not even paying attention.

Maybe, he thinks on the first day of his second week of vacation, it's a sign that he _is_ lonely. He's been trying his best not to think like that, attempting to drown that old woman's weird observations in a parade of one night stands (that's what vacations are for, right?) and Danneel-directed drinking binges, but the seal thing has him wondering.

On the days they don't go swimming, Jensen still heads down to the shore in the morning for a run, and it's like the seal knows. Sam is waiting there for him every morning. He walks along the shoreline, his ankles in the water, and the seal drags itself loyally at his heels. Sometimes, he sits on the rocks by the water with his feet swinging over the waves and Sam shows up while he's watching the sunset. Sam sits by Jensen's side and listens when he talks, or at least cocks his head in the right way and nods at appropriate times, and Jensen must be crazy if he's imagining that a seal cares about his problems.

He must be kind of pathetic if he's looking to a wild animal for meaningful company and finding it.

"Get dressed," Jensen says, bursting into the living room and startling Danneel out of her food and TV coma. "We're going to a party!"

"A party," Danneel says, her head rolling on the couch until she can catch Jensen's eye. "I thought you said you felt like taking a break tonight?"

"Does that mean you don't want to go to the party our neighbors are throwing?" Jensen asks, lifting an eyebrow. "There's gonna be a bonfire."

Danneel is up in moments. "When have I ever not been in the mood for a party?"

Jensen's pretty sure he'll never see the day.

The house is only three down from the one Jensen and Danneel are renting, so they can see the light from the fire and hear the music as soon as they walk out. They arrive within minutes and Jensen loses Danneel in the chaos of people, all swaying to the music of guitars strumming or joining their voices in a buzz of conversation.

It reminds Jensen a little of the ragers they used to have in high school when the football team won, only everyone here seems to be old enough for the beers gripped in their hands, and that's something, at least. Now it's easy, lazy and laidback, whereas Jensen used to only feel an unpleasant tension under his skin, a worry that the cops would come, or he would get stuck talking to someone he really just wanted to punch.

Lucky for Jensen, the first person who approaches him is not entirely unpleasant. The guy walks up and stops at a respectful distance, giving Jensen a shy smile. He's not as tall as Jensen would prefer and could stand to put on some muscle, but his face is sweet and earnest and he'll more than do for now.

"I'm Gil. Gil McKinney," the guy says, raising his head so a few brown strands of hair shake out of his eyes, and yeah. That's working for Jensen just fine. He holds a hand out to gesture toward the party, then offers it to Jensen. "My buddies and I are renting this place for the summer."

"So you're the welcome wagon?" Jensen asks, shaking his hand.

Someone shoves by them, pushing Jensen closer, and Gil's other hand reaches out, steadying itself on Jensen's elbow. It's pretty suave as far as obvious excuses to touch go, and Jensen didn't really come out tonight looking for someone subtle. He came here to prove to himself that he can still hold conversations with people who aren't, well. Seals.

"Not for everyone," Gil answers, his eyes lingering on Jensen's and his lips twisting up just a bit. "Saw you and couldn't resist coming over. Can I get you a beer, uh—?"

"Jensen," he says.

"Jensen," Gil echoes with a grin. "Can I get you a beer, Jensen?"

Half an hour later, Gil and Jensen are on their second round of drinks, and Jensen's enjoying himself. They make their way over to the bonfire to grab a seat on one of the logs, and Jensen laughs when he sees Danneel, who is apparently enjoying herself even more than he is.

She pulls away from the mouth she was attached to and looks up at Jensen with her patented tequila grin. "Jensen," she says, her head lolling a bit. "Have you met Aldis? This is Aldis. Aldis is great."

The guy whose lap she's sprawled on top of attempts to raise his hand in a wave, but he doesn't get much of a chance before she's on him again.

Jensen just snickers at that, and Gil laughs, too. "It was Aldis's idea to throw this party. I guess that worked out for him."

"Yeah, I'll say," Jensen agrees. He watches the Aldis-Danneel lump writhe around on the log across from them a few minutes longer, then does some easy math in his head and turns to Gil with a dirty smile. "She's my roommate while we're on this little trip. My only roommate."

Gil obviously gets what Jensen is trying to say. "She doesn't look like she's going home any time soon."

"No," Jensen agrees. "No, she doesn't."

It's only five minutes later when Jensen kicks the door to his beach house open, drags Gil in and pushes him up against the wall. They make out on and off all the way up the stairs, and they fuck and it's nice. It scratches an itch.

It doesn't feel any different than the other one-night-stands Jensen's enjoyed in the last week, and that's the problem. When they're done and dressed and Jensen walks Gil downstairs, he doesn't feel like he's made some kind of connection, and when Gil awkwardly hovers at the door, trying to decide whether to give Jensen a last kiss or get walking, Jensen doesn't feel an impulse to surge forward and put the guy out of his misery.

"So, that was great," Gil says, smiling his kind smile again. Jensen really likes the smile. He likes Gil. He doesn't know what exactly his problem is, just that some senile old lady gave him a cryptic fortune cookie goodbye, and ever since, he's felt the need to psychoanalyze every conversation he has with anyone. "Listen, I'd love to see you again sometime. Maybe we could have dinner or—"

Jensen gives him the same easy, dismissive smile he gave the last four guys. "Danneel and I have dinner pretty much every night, so I'm all set on dinners."

Gil's face falls, but he nods. "Right, sure. Hey, I get it. Thanks, anyway. I had a nice night."

"Yeah, me too."

Jensen watches Gil walk back across the beach with his flip flops in hand, toward the still-glowing bonfire and the sounds of the party, which seems to have calmed considerably since he and Gil left. Then his eyes scan across the shoreline, and he thinks he sees the dark outline of a man watching him.

One of the other party guests, Jensen assumes, even though this one seems to have strayed quite a bit. Jensen almost calls out to him, to tell him the party is in the opposite direction, but in the blink of an eye, the dark silhouette is gone. Jensen isn't even entirely sure it was there to begin with.

Next to him, the wind chime he bought last week suddenly goes quiet, the light tinkling music Jensen hadn't been listening to until it stopped jarring in its absence.

He hadn't felt the wind at all. It was as if the damned thing was moving on its own.

Jensen steps up to inspect it, flicks one of the green glass pieces with his fingers, and watches it sway for a few seconds before shaking his head. "You're starting to give me the creeps," he tells it, thinking of the woman who sold it to him and laughing to himself as he closes the door, turns off the porch light, and goes upstairs to sleep.

The next morning, Jensen wakes to the insistent buzzing of his phone on the nightstand. He tries to slap it for a while before he realizes it's not his alarm, and then he grudgingly answers it.

"Hello," he mumbles into the receiver.

"Darling," says Danneel, her voice bright and chipper and not at all sounding like she drank a barrel last night and is suffering the Lord's wrath for it. "How are you?"

"I hate it when you do this," Jensen tells her.

"Do what?" she asks.

"Wake me up the morning after you've gone Tequila Princess so you can rub it in my face that you're immortal."

She laughs at him, the monster. "I'm not immortal. I'm hangover-proof. There is a difference."

"It's 7:23 in the morning and I'm on vacation," Jensen tells her, rolling onto his back after checking the clock. "I don't see differences."

She hums on the other end of the line. "Have you looked outside?"

"Morning. Bad. Me. Sleep. What about any of this makes you think I've looked outside?" Jensen casts an eye to the window then and pretty much immediately realizes why she's asking. "Holy crap, what's happening?"

"Hell of a storm," she says. "Apparently yesterday was the calm before, but we forgot to check the weather because, well, you know. Party."

"Yeah, wow. What the hell?" He gets out of bed and goes to his window, pushing the thin curtains aside. They're more than enough to keep the room dark today, the thick gray clouds not really needing much help. "I guess we're not going to the beach."

Danneel snorts; it's a very attractive, ladylike snort, and Jensen feels a wave of fondness when he hears it. "Not going anywhere. Anyway, that's what I was calling to say. I won't be home until this clears up, so don't worry about me."

Jensen lets the curtain drop and grins. "Oh, sure. Blame the weather."

"I don't know what you're getting at," she says, presumably trying to sound innocent, but sounding way too much like the Danneel he knows and loves to even hope to pull it off.

"I'm sure you'll have a hard time being locked over there with your new friend Aldis. Stuck inside all day. How on Earth will you stay busy?"

"Oh, look at that, the call is breaking up," Danneel tells him, barely containing her laughter. "I'm going to get back to Bible study."

"Use protection," Jensen yells into the phone before the line cuts.

He stays in bed a little longer, checking emails and game scores on his phone, and takes his time making his way downstairs for breakfast. No reason to rush. With the way the rain's coming down, he'll be lucky if it's clear enough for his morning run by tomorrow.

Jensen's standing over the sink, spooning the last bits of cereal into his mouth and idly wondering if Sam will be okay—what do seals even do in weather like this?—when he catches a glimpse of the last thing in the world he expects to see.

There's a man outside. Jensen would tell himself he was imagining it if he could, but there's no doubt about it. There's a shadowy figure directly across from his house, standing on the jagged rocks above the water, hard to distinguish any features, but decidedly human-shaped as a bolt of lightning breaks on the horizon and his outline is illuminated.

He's not running from the onslaught. Not moving at all. Just standing patiently, turned toward Jensen's house as if there isn't chaos going on around him.

Jensen knows what he should do. He should ignore it. This guy is clearly insane, and why should Jensen go out and risk his neck (not to mention get his ass kicked by the elements) just because some crazy guy happened to stop in front of his house?

But the thing is…Jensen's a writer. He's never once in his life been able to walk away from a 'what if' just because it would be idiotic not to.

So he borrows a rain jacket from the closet, one of the bright red ones he and Danneel had mocked mercilessly when they first got here, and steps outside. Even on the covered porch, Jensen is immediately whipped by cold droplets, the harsh wind causing sand to cut across his face, and he considers going back in. But the guy is still standing out there.

"Hey," Jensen calls once he's close enough to see the guy a little better, but not quite stepping onto the slippery rocks. Apparently the storm is too loud, and the guy doesn't respond.

"I'm gonna regret this," Jensen tells himself, even as he places his foot on one wet stone and then staggers to gain footing.

He's close enough now to see the man, though the clouds are making it too dark to get good detail on his face. The stranger isn't wearing anything except a pair of black swim trunks, shiny from the water and clinging to him like second skin, so Jensen can see every muscle on his body. He's big—huge, bigger than Jensen—with a swimmer's build Poseidon would envy, wide shoulders tapering into tiny hips, thick legs that stretch up like sequoias.

This guy is probably a lunatic, definitely in danger, and here Jensen is, pausing in what might as well be a hurricane to objectify him. He stops in front of the man and looks up to see eyes that shift like the sea watching him.

"Hey, are you alright?" Jensen asks. He takes a closer look, trying to make sure the man isn’t bleeding, and then to his horror, he reaches out. Presses his hand against the guy's broad chest, slides another up, over his shoulders, and then moves them down.

Jensen tells himself to stop, but he can't. He can't take his hands away, it's like his brain and his body won't connect and sure, the guy is insanely hot, but that doesn't give Jensen the right to feel him up when he should be assuring the stranger that it's okay for him to follow Jensen inside where it's warm and dry.

"I'm sorry," Jensen says, feeling his face flush. "I don't—you shouldn't be out here. Are you lost? I can help you get back to wherever you came from or—or we can—you can come to my place until the rain has calmed a little. I promise I won't—"

He's flustered, humiliated and disgusted with himself, but the man doesn't get angry. He doesn't respond much at all, just looks at Jensen with this wide-eyed expression and, fuck, that probably means he is definitely not the kind of person Jensen should be feeling up, even if he was giving some indication that he wanted it, which he isn't.

"It's not safe out here," Jensen says, nodding like that's all he came to say and he'll turn around and go inside now, except that won't happen, seeing as how he can't tear his hands away from this ridiculously firm bicep. "I'm sorry, I don't know why—"

The guy takes his hands gently between his own and holds them still. Jensen is shaking, dying to reestablish contact, but when he looks up at the stranger again, the man is watching him with enough desperation that Jensen thinks he's going to ask for help, and he should be able to at least clear his mind enough to focus on that, right?

He watches the guy's mouth for a long minute as he opens it, as if he's about to say something, and then closes it, over and over again. Only his eyes seem to be in the moment, and Jensen doesn't blink as he stares up at them. Where has he seen those eyes before?

"Can you speak?" Jensen asks him. He gets one hand free and reaches up, touches the man's cheek. "It's okay if you can't. We'll figure it out. We just need to get inside."

Finally the man seems to make a decision. He gives Jensen a weak smile and says, "Please."

It's remarkable what happens then. That one little word seems to pop a bubble, and suddenly Jensen's mind is clear. He becomes acutely aware of the winds lashing around them, the rain beating down, and yes, the stranger is ridiculously attractive, but Jensen doesn't feel compelled to touch him the way he had.

"Please," the guy says again. His voice is rough, like he doesn't use it much, but he doesn’t have to lift it for Jensen to catch every word, despite the rumbling thunder above them. "My name is Jared."

"Good for you?" Jensen replies, not realizing it comes out catty until it's out. "Look, we really need to get inside."

Jared shakes his head, long brown strands scattering water as he does so. "Please, will you say my name?"

"Jared," Jensen says. "We aren't safe out here, Jared. We need to get inside."

Jared cups Jensen's face with one big hand and smiles sadly when Jensen says his name, and it’s like he didn't hear anything else Jensen said.

"Thank you," he whispers, and then, before Jensen can even process what's happening, he turns, runs across the rocks on his bare feet, and plunges into the water.

"You can't—" Jensen yells after him, his heart in his throat, expecting to see Jared slip and break his neck. Jared disappears over the edge in seconds, his feet incredibly agile and confident on the wet rock, but that doesn't make the frantic beating of Jensen's pulse calm any.

Even if he made it to the water alive, it's madness to jump into an ocean this turbulent, not knowing what currents are being stirred up, with no way to avoid drowning, or being dashed to pieces on the jagged cliff side.

Jensen follows Jared's path, much more slowly, not nearly as comfortable (or reckless) on the uneven terrain as Jared had been. He stops at the edge and looks over. There's no sign of Jared—no broken corpse, but no one struggling, showing that he's still alive out there, either.

He feels sick, but he doesn't know what to do or how he could have stopped it. He never could have anticipated Jared's actions. So he rushes back to his house as quickly as he can manage in the rough weather, calls the local police and coastguard and tells them what happened.

While the rain pounds against the roof, Jensen spends the rest of the day shaken, listening as it only gets more wild, trying not to imagine what it would be like to be nearly naked, cold and alone out there. Jared probably fled because of Jensen, because he'd been so handsy. Jensen wouldn't be able to blame the guy if he had, but the thought is unbearable. That man could be dead because Jensen chased him away. Because he couldn't keep his hands to himself, and he doesn't know what the hell came over him. He's never been like that. This was no time to start.

When the storm finally passes that night, he watches the rescue boats comb the nearby water for unlucky victims. The nightly news reports no casualties, chalks it up to a successful storm alert and good preparation on behalf of the town's residents.

Jensen calls the coastguard three more times that night, desperate for an update, someone saying they found Jared and saved him, or even that they were too late, just so he at least knows for sure what happened to the guy. On the third call, the woman on the other line tries to sound sympathetic even as she tells Jensen he probably hadn't seen what he thought he saw; the rain was too heavy for clear observations, and a lot of people see strange things when they’re worried. Out-of-towners just don't know how to handle these kinds of storms, she explains with a gentle, patronizing tone.

But Jared had been there, solid under his hands, his expression mirroring back something Jensen might have recognized in himself, his voice a low comfort even in the turmoil. He had been there, even if Jensen had spent most of the encounter in some kind of dazed spell, Jensen is sure of it. And he had seen Jared run and jump, off those rocks, into the water.

He heads up to bed but he doesn't sleep for hours, not until the sound of the wind chime down stairs, still swinging wildly in the after-storm gusts, carries him off into dreams of drowning and crashing and strong arms pulling him back to the surface.

By the next day, the storm clouds have vanished, the beach is cleared of rescue searches, and all the debris and evidence of yesterday's weather has disappeared. Families with bright colored towels dot the beach when Jensen goes for his morning run. Danneel is sitting on the porch with a cup of coffee, a red mark on her neck, and a smug look on her face by the time he gets back, and Jensen doesn't have a chance to say hello before she's launched into all the juicy details.

Days pass and their routine returns to normal. He and Danneel lie on the sand most of the day, eat at cute local diners, and generally laze away their vacation. Jensen runs in the morning, and Sam waits for him by the beach. He tries to bury the thought of Jared, of what could have happened to him.

And then a few nights later, as Jensen is walking along the shore at sunset, he sees the outline of a form that reminds him of the man he saw from the kitchen window the night he ran into the rain, standing exactly where he had been, at the edge of the rocks.

Jensen speeds up, eager to find out if it's someone else and he's only fooling himself, but the closer he gets the more sure he is. Jared is facing the ocean, staring out, and by the time Jensen is near enough to be sure it's him, the words are already flying out of his mouth.

"You're alive," he says, seizing Jared's arm and shaking it. "Do you have any idea how much you terrified me? God, how did you make it? Why would you do something so stupid? I was sure you were—"

Jared watches him with an amused quirk to his lips as Jensen spills out every thought that's passed through his mind for the last few days, and then suddenly Jensen collects himself enough to notice something off to the side that makes his blood run cold, makes him shove Jared hard, not caring that it could send him flying back into the rocks, to the very death he was so relieved Jared somehow escaped.

A few feet away, there's a seal skin lying on the sand. It's cut right in half, and as much as Jensen doesn't want to admit it, he'd know Sam's little face smiling up at him anywhere.

"You killed him," he says, staring at the long slice down Sam's stomach. "You can't—can't do that. They're protected. You can't. I'll call the police. I'll kill you myself."

For a moment he considers lashing out at Jared again, trying to throttle him. There was no need for this. Sam was kind, wouldn't have hurt a human. He wouldn't have hurt anyone.

Instead he tries to run to the seal's body, but he feels Jared's arms wrap around him and pull him back. There are tears stinging at his eyes, and maybe it's a little dramatic to get so worked up over a seal, but Sam was his friend. He didn't deserve this violence.

"Why?" he says, struggling futilely against Jared's hold. "Why would you do that to him? Why?"

"Shh," Jared says. "It's okay. You're back earlier than I thought. I didn't think you would be here yet."

"So that excuses it somehow, that you thought you'd get away with it?" Jared lets him go and he turns to face the man, gets even angrier when he sees that Jared still looks as bemused as he had when Jensen first approached him. "You know, I worried about you. I've been worrying about you nonstop these last few days. I wish you _had_ died."

He steps forward more slowly now, falls to his knees next to Sam's body. Despite the slice down his middle, there's no blood. It's like he's already been cleaned out, and Jensen's stomach turns. It doesn't seem right that Jared could have reduced the seal to so little in the time he was gone.

Jared bends down, too, scoops the body into his arms. "It's okay," he says. "I wanted him to be here for you, when you got back."

Jensen looks up at the stranger towering above him, shaking his head as he tries to rub tears off his cheeks. "Don't blame this on me. I didn't want this."

The smile on Jared's face grows, shows dimples and a sweet, childlike innocence that doesn't match up with the butchered animal draped across his arms. Then he slips the skin over his shoulders, until the ends of it reach his arms. In the fury of the storm last week, Jensen hadn’t noticed that a long cut runs up the inside of each of Jared’s forearms, but he can’t miss it now as the seal hide settles into the open skin and fills it, becoming whole. Before Jensen can protest, Jared somehow disappears into the opening in the creature's stomach, more and more of him swallowed up by the second despite the fact that he was much bigger than the seal a few moments ago.

Before Jensen really has a chance to process what he's just seen, Sam is a few feet in front of him, staring up with his great big ocean-colored eyes, which Jensen realizes now match Jared's exactly. The seal rolls over onto his back, and there's no sign there of the cut down his middle, just like there's no trace of Jared left.

Too shocked to do anything but blink with his mouth hanging open, Jensen watches as Sam—or Jared—waddles his way back into the water and disappears.

Jensen sits gaping like an idiot for half an hour before he manages to drag his ass back to the house. Danneel is in the kitchen with Aldis, the two of them stealing food off each other's plates and bickering flirtatiously when he gets inside.

Normally, Jensen would roll his eyes, tell them to get a room, all while secretly charmed by how excessively cute they are together. Right now, he walks in silent, heads straight to the breakfast bar and takes a seat next to Danneel.

"Hey, man," Aldis says, raising a spatula in greeting. He's wearing the bright pink KISS THE COOK apron Danneel found in the linen closet last week and nothing but boxers underneath, which Jensen hardly takes note of before nodding back to Aldis to acknowledge his hello.

"Whoa, you just didn't check out a hot guy's ass," Danneel observes. "Babe, are you feeling okay?"

Jensen looks over at her, shrugs, but still can't manage to figure out what to say. If he tries to explain what he just saw, they'll tell him he's crazy. Worse than that, judging by what he just saw, he probably _is_ crazy.

"Maybe he was just being respectful," Aldis suggests. "I'm not a piece of meat, you know."

"Oh, I beg to differ," Danneel says, grinning so wide that Aldis bends over the counter to give her a kiss.

She turns her attention to Jensen after, apparently too wrapped up in her summer fling to realize how spooked he’s acting. "Aldis is grilling bourbon burgers that are so good they would reduce a stone wall to tears, and I told him to make enough for you, because I am the greatest best friend ever."

"Yeah," Jensen says. He forces a smile, then shakes his head. "You know, thanks, but I'm not really hungry."

Danneel pouts a bit. "So I'm guessing you're not going to want to come to the party Aldis and his roommates are throwing later?"

"Gil will be there," Aldis says encouragingly. "I know he'd be glad to see you again."

"Who?" Jensen asks, and he doesn’t realize what an asshole question it is until Danneel's eyes bulge out of her head and she lightly kicks Jensen under the table.

"You remember Gil," she insists. "Aldis's roommate. From the party last week."

"Oh, right," Jensen says, cringing, because he's not the kind of person who fucks a guy and can't even remember his name a week later, not usually. He's just a little preoccupied. By the fact that he just watched a grown man turn into a seal. Which he doesn't really plan to announce, at least not until he's had a good long think about it. "Yeah, Gil. Nice guy. Sorry, look, I'm just a little out of it right now."

"Clearly," Danneel mumbles.

Aldis turns from the stovetop grill with a concerned look on his face and shoves a plate with a giant burger at Jensen. "You need to eat, man."

Jensen accepts it, thanks him, and promptly stands to take the burger up to his room. Being around people without a chance to process is apparently the last thing he needs.

"So that's a no to the party then?"

He looks down at his burger, then up at the worried expressions both Aldis and Danneel are aiming at him. Stressing his friends out is not going to make the fact that he's losing his mind any easier, and anyway, maybe he's been too much on his own the last few days. Maybe that's why he's cracking. A party and another chance at convincing himself he can be interested in Gil might be exactly what he needs.

"I'll go to the party. I just need a little while in my room, by myself. I have to check something online. Tell me when you're leaving, okay?"

Danneel and Aldis make 'mmmhmm' sounds as they chew their burgers, and Jensen heads upstairs, immediately setting the plate down next to his computer.

The first thing he does is type the word _selkie_ into Google, because he knows that's what Jared is, if Jared is anything other than a figment of his imagination.

Jensen reads everything he can and doesn't realize time is passing until there's a knock on his door, and Danneel yells that they're leaving in ten minutes, so he'd better be dressed. He's surprised to find he ate most of the food on his plate while he was browsing the sites he found, and he feels a little more centered having done some research, even if most of the lore he found was contradictory or unclear.

At least if there are so many stories about this, legends dating back hundreds of years, there's a chance it's a real thing. However slim the chance may be.

He dresses quickly, grateful because he doesn't have to stress over what to wear when they're just walking a few houses over for a party on the beach. In all likelihood, everyone will get drunk, strip to their underwear, and end up in the water before midnight, anyway.

Aldis and Danneel get pulled away by people they know almost immediately, which leaves Jensen alone to wander. He heads toward the bonfire and decides it's kismet when he sees Gil sitting on one of the logs around the fire by himself.

He walks right up to him and smiles down as he says, "Hey."

Gil looks up, and he seems a little surprised to see Jensen, which is fair enough, because he's been sending messages through Aldis since they hooked up, and Jensen ignored all of them. "Oh, hi. I haven't seen you around since…" 

"Yeah," Jensen replies. "Sorry about that. I think I checked out a little after the storm."

"I think you checked out before then," Gil says, and Jensen probably deserves that. "I mean, it's cool. One night is one night."

"Well, I was thinking maybe we could talk again tonight?" Jensen smiles, pointing to the empty spot on the log next to Gil. "Can I sit down?"

Gil makes an uncomfortable face, and just then someone slides in around Jensen and takes the seat, handing Gil a beer and grinning. "Sorry it took so long. Felicia is guarding the keg and making people answer complicated math questions before she'll let you have a drink."

"That sounds like her," Gil says, huffing a laugh. He looks up at Jensen again, and it's not hard to see he's _smitten_ with the little dude who just took Jensen's spot. "Jensen, this is Osric. Osric, Jensen."

"Hey," Osric says, reaching up to shake Jensen's hand. "Nice to meet you! You another of Gil's buddies from home?"

"No, Jensen is friends with Danneel. You remember, you met her yesterday?"

Osric nods agreeably. "Right, yeah. Sorry I didn't get you a drink, man. Didn't realize—"

"Actually, I was just swinging by to say hi on the way to grab a beer for myself. But it was great to meet you. Nice to see you again, Gil."

"I hope you're good at math," Osric says before turning his attention to a very relieved looking Gil and pulling the guitar he'd had strapped around his back around. "Wanna try another song?"

Jensen walks off, hearing the start of Osric playing and Gil singing along to some John Legend song. It's Aldis-and-Danneel levels of public affection, and Jensen thinks maybe he should feel jealous, but he doesn't. He's glad everyone has found someone who makes them happy, even if he's the only one who seems to have found someone who just makes him confused.

And maybe that crazy lady they'd met their first day here was right, because he _is_ lonely, and he seems to be actively working to stay that way. He could have been the one sitting by a fire with a hot guy singing overwritten pop ballads if he'd played his cards differently.

Jensen has just decided to give up on making any meaningful human connections when he notices the shadow of someone standing not quite outside of the party, but right on the edge of it. Jensen recognizes Jared's profile fairly easily by now, even if they've only met twice and both times were brief and weird as hell. Jared leaves an impression.

Jared seems to be waiting for Jensen. He stays right where he is and doesn't look the least bit surprised when Jensen heads straight for him.

"You really enjoy lurking, huh?" Jensen says in lieu of a greeting.

"I don't spend a lot of time around humans," he says, like it's a perfectly normal thing to say, and Jensen supposes it probably is, for him. "Coming ashore during a party is risky enough without drawing attention."

"Bad news, buddy, a guy your size standing off by himself draws attention anyway."

"No," Jared says. He reaches out, brushing the backs of his fingers on Jensen's cheek. "Only yours." Jared smiles. "You were looking for me."

"Well, don't get an ego about it. You cheated with the party trick where you turned into a seal."

Jared laughs, letting his hand drop from Jensen's face. "I guess you're probably wondering a lot of things right now."

"I know what you are," Jensen tells him. "You're a selkie."

"Just like that?" Jared asks, raising an eyebrow. "I gotta say this conversation isn't going at all how I expected."

"How did you expect it to go?" Jensen throws a look over his shoulder, back toward the crowd of people at the party. "How do people usually take it?"

"I've never spoken to a human before," Jared answers. He takes Jensen's hand and tugs him in the opposite direction, back toward Jensen's house and those rocks he seems so fond of. "And in the interest of not being overheard, let's go somewhere we can be alone."

Jensen thinks, probably, he should be a little more leery of all of this. Jared is still a stranger, even if they've spent a lot of time together when he was in his seal form, and the whole thing is so bizarre. It's not a good idea to get in any deeper than he already is, especially without knowing the conditions.

But Jared is interesting, and Jensen has never known how to turn away from something that piques his interest. Somehow, with his hand in Jared's much bigger one, he doesn't feel lonely for the first time in longer than he'd even realized. He can breathe easier right now, like a boulder has been pushed off his chest.

"What do you mean you've never spoken to a human before?" Jensen asks. "You spoke to me that night in the storm."

"Yes." Jared bites his lip, looking over at Jensen fondly. "That was pretty stupid of me. A lot of things I've done since I first heard your song have been stupid."

"Heard my song?" Jensen asks.

"I'll try to explain." Jared squeezes his hand. "In time."

Unfortunately, patience has never been Jensen's strong suit. "What happens if you speak to a human?"

"Right now? Nothing." Jared pauses his trek to look back and meet Jensen's eye. "The spell is already broken."

"That doesn't make any sense," Jensen replies. "Where do you hide Sam—your skin, whatever—when you come on land like this?"

"Usually better than I did earlier today," Jared says, sounding both amused and wary. "Another stupid decision. I'm sorry you had to see that. But at least now you know. Now I can speak to you, there's nothing to lose since I already broke the spell and you know my secret."

"I don't understand half of what you're saying," Jensen tells him. "But seriously, where is your skin? You're not watching it."

Jared turns, letting Jensen's hand drop, and brackets his shoulders with big hands instead. "Why do you keep asking me that?"

"Because if someone finds it they'll hurt you," Jensen replies. "You can't just leave it lying around."

There's no doubt that the expression that registers on Jared's face is relief. "You don't want to find it for yourself. You're just worried about me."

"I've done nothing but worry about you since the first day we met," Jensen reminds him.

"You have nothing to worry about. I hide it well. No one's ever found it, not in hundreds of years."

"Hundreds of years?" Jensen asks.

Jared's laugh is quiet, really only manifests in the way he drops his head and lets his smile widen. Jensen hardly sees the glint of his big teeth in the moonlight, and there's so much truth to all the legends that speak of the ethereal beauty of these creatures, even if they only mentioned selkie women.

"You know so much about us," Jared teases. "And not how we age?"

"I don't know that much, really," Jensen admits. "Only what I found doing research for the last few hours. Pretty much the only thing everyone agrees on is that you can't just leave your skin lying around for anyone to find."

"That is true. If someone finds my skin, they will own me. It's a very painful thing. But it won't happen. And it's worth risking, so I can speak to you."

"What's so great about me?" Jensen asks, trying to sound playful, but the question comes out sounding a lot more earnest than he'd have liked.

"I've waited so long for your song," Jared says, and now he's the one that sounds like he's in a daze. "I didn't know I was waiting until I heard it. Now I see that every hour of my life without it was a prison sentence."

"That sounds really melodramatic," Jensen informs him.

Jared snorts, rolls his eyes and takes Jensen's hand, starting their walk down the beach again. "Well, we can't all be like you. You watch a guy turn into a seal in front of your eyes and a few hours later you're as casual as can be."

Jensen shakes his head. "Believe me, I freaked out about it plenty for a while there. I did research to calm myself down. There are stories about people like you, a lot of them."

"You believe stories?" Jared asks. "I thought your kind were all into science these days. Observable fact, nothing that isn't proven."

"I'm a writer," Jensen explains. "I know how important stories can be. There's always truth to them, even if I wouldn't have guessed this truth. It was either accept that you're a selkie or accept that I was losing my mind. So, I really have a stake in it being the former."

"That's fair." Jared stops once they reach the beach out front of Jensen's house and looks out at the water for a while before he says, "What else do the legends say?"

Jensen shrugs. "Not much. They don't say you're evil, though it sounds like you get treated pretty crappy by humans, so I guess I get the aversion."

"We have no aversion to your kind," Jared assures him. "We exist to help you. People like you specifically."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Jensen asks. "What kind of person am I?"

"A very lonely one," Jared says, sounding sad. He brings Jensen's hands up to his lips, pressing a kiss to the knuckles clasped in his own fist. "I don't think I've ever heard a soul as lonely as yours."

"Why do people keep saying that?" Jensen demands. "Okay, so I'm a chronically single, but that doesn’t mean I don't have great friends and a family that—"

"I know that," Jared says, putting a finger over Jensen's mouth before he can get too worked up. "I know you have people who love you, and that you love them. But you're missing something, something important."

"Oh, and what's that?" Jensen asks, and deep down, he knows Jared's right. That there's been a part of him absent his whole life, and he's felt it lately, even if he didn't realize it at first. It's killing him, and he doesn't know what it is, but he knows filling it with boyfriends hasn't worked, has led him to the empty parade of one night stands his summer has turned into. His voice is weaker when he adds, "If you know what it is, please just tell me."

"You won't believe me if I do." Jared takes a seat on the edge of the jutting rock he's so fond of, letting his legs dangle over the ocean. "It's one of those things you have to learn for yourself."

Jensen hangs back, watching him for a long minute before he finally decides to step out onto the rocks himself and sit next to Jared.

"It's beautiful, isn't it? The ocean at night. The way the moon shines on it."

"Jared, I don't want to talk about the ocean."

Jared looks over at him, a sly smile on his face. "What could possibly be more important?"

"Right now?" Jensen laughs. "Where do I even begin?"

"My kin and I, when we're needed, we hear a song. Every person has a song. I bet you didn't know that. We only hear the people who need us. For different reasons, usually, but the people we hear need the same things." Jared rubs his hands on his thighs. "Companionship, pleasure, a kind touch. We hear the songs that people who need us don't even know they're singing. We don't all hear the same people. Only the ones who we could soothe. We go to these people, and we make them less lonely."

"So that's it?" Jensen asks. "You heard some white noise coming off me and felt sorry for me?"

"You haven't let me finish," Jared says. "You're impatient. I find it both irritating and endearing."

"Most people lean toward the former, in case you're wondering," Jensen jokes. "Go on, then. Finish."

"Usually, we hear a song and we go to it. The person sees us and is under a kind of spell—not anything we control. It doesn't make them do anything they don't want. But it makes it so that they take what we came to give them and then we leave. They don't have the clarity of mind to steal our skins or trap us. It's a defense mechanism, you see? We're so vulnerable to your species without it."

"That's why I couldn't stop touching you in the storm the first time we met," Jensen realizes.

"Yes." Jared looks away. "As long as we don't speak to the person, they are under this spell. That means we're safe to help without being captured."

"But you spoke to me," Jensen says. 

Jared nods. "I tried not to. I tried so hard not to."

"What was different?" Jensen asks. "What made you speak to me when you haven't done that before?"

Jared looks up, meeting Jensen's eyes with a much more intense expression than Jensen is prepared for. "I just wanted to hear you say my name. My real name, not calling me by some name you made up for a seal."

"That's so stupid, Jared," Jensen tells him. "You opened yourself up to—"

"I know you won't hurt me," Jared replies unapologetically. "You said before that I only came to you because I felt sorry for you. That's not true. I've broken most of the rules my people have, rules that are supposed to protect us, because you're different. Your song is so much stronger than any of the ones I've heard before. So much more beautiful, Jensen." He leans forward, one hand cupping Jensen's cheek. "Beautiful just like you."

Jensen would normally roll his eyes at a line like that, but instead he feels like there's a magnet between them, like Jared is pulling him in even though the touch is so gentle it's barely there.

Their lips meet in a kiss so tentative Jensen isn't even sure it happened, but he opens to it, tries to lean forward for more, and Jared doesn't disappoint. This time there's pressure, impossibly huge hands wrapping around his waist and drawing him closer. They kiss deeply, and when they break, Jensen sighs from a mix of breathlessness and a bone deep satisfaction like nothing he's ever felt. The sensation begins to fade away the longer they're separated, and Jensen is pretty sure he knows what he was missing without Jared having to tell him.

"I don't understand," Jensen says. "Are we soulmates?"

"I'm not familiar with this concept," Jared answers. "Will you explain it to me?"

"I don't know how to explain it," Jensen says with a laugh. "I don't even know if I believe in it. Souls are…" He pauses, casting around in his mind for a way to explain a concept so ingrained in him since childhood, something he used to scoff at when his grandmother dragged him to church. He's supposed to be good with words, but the scale of what he's asking Jared isn't easy to express. "A soul is, like, a person's essence. Who we really are, inside. When we talk about soulmates, it's supposed to mean you were intended for this other person, for them alone. Like the entire core of who you are needs them and they need you." He can feel his ears burning, so he ducks his head. "I always thought it was kind of ridiculous, honestly. People being born for each other, what a crock."

He hazards a glance up, to see if his blowing off the concept is easing the weirdness of having asked a complete stranger if they're supposed to be together forever. But Jared's expression is earnest, and he looks like he's seriously considering what Jensen just said.

"I'm not sure I think it's ridiculous," he says after a long spell of silence. "I don't know if we're soulmates. But maybe what I hear as a song is your soul. If you don't hear them, how do humans sense each other's souls?"

"Well, we don't, really." Jensen shrugs, wondering if this sounds crazy to someone who has something concrete, songs he's definitely heard, as a frame of reference. "We just sort of believe we have them. Or don't. So the whole thing about one person's soul being meant for another—it's just a foolish gamble."

Jared nods, but it's a sad sort of acknowledgement. "Maybe it's foolish to feel like I'm the only one who can answer your song. Something so perfect shouldn't be meant just for me. But I can hear that you need someone. And I know that the way your song affects me is not like anything a selkie should feel." He frowns. "I think I've seen it happen before, once. It's certainly never happened to me."

"So what now?" Jensen asks.

Jared shrugs. "I'm not really sure about that either. I know I want to get to know you, though."

"Good," Jensen agrees. "I want the same thing."

So they sit there and talk, talk about nothing in particular, until the sounds of the party in the distance have died off and the moonlight glinting off the water begins to swirl into the bright pink of a sunrise. When Jensen is yawning more than he can get any words out, Jared presses a kiss to his forehead and calmly slips into the water.

He watches the shadow disappear knowing he won't see Jared come back up for air, until finally he drags himself back to the house and to his bed, terrified he'll wake soon to realize it was all a dream.

Jensen's not sure the next morning, so he goes about his routine as if everything's normal. Sam isn't waiting for him when he leaves for his morning run, but he isn't always, and Jensen refuses to let himself obsess.

Danneel and Aldis show up before long, both looking sufficiently partied out for one day, and the three of them head down to the beach at a straggler's pace. They've only just finished settling themselves on towels when a long shadow steps into Jensen's sunlight, causing him to squint his eyes open to see what it is.

Of all the things he's expecting, Jared in the world's ugliest board shorts is not on the list, but there the guy is, looming a hundred feet tall now that Jensen's lying on the sand, and he sees more of the hideous fuchsia and teal flower pattern on Jared's bathing suit than he does of the gorgeous man he knows is up there somewhere.

He says, "Jared?" like a question before he can stop himself, but Jared doesn't panic at Jensen naming him in front of his friends, just plops down on the sand next to Jensen, pretty much the same way he does when he's in his other form.

"Hey, Jensen!" he says, like this is the most normal thing in the world. "Mind if I join you?"

"Jared," Danneel asks. "Since when is there a Jared? Do you have a Jared?" She turns to Aldis. "Have you heard anything about this guy having a Jared?"

Jensen is too busy trying to communicate with Jared solely through his bulging eyeballs to even know what to say, and before he can formulate a plan, Jared is leaning over Jensen, extending his hand to Danneel.

"You must be Danneel," he says, and if Jensen didn't know to look for the tension in his body, it would seem like he talks to people on a regular basis. "I've heard so much about you."

"From Jensen," Danneel replies, openly staring at Jared as she shakes his hand. "Who you know."

"We met last night, at the party," Jared tells her.

"He didn't mention…" She leans over and tries to whisper, but her voice carries, because Danneel and subtlety have never been friends. "Is this why you left so early? Damn, we thought you were just being a wet blanket. I don't give you enough credit."

Jensen hides his face in his hands, which makes Jared and Danneel both laugh at him. God, the last thing he needs is those two teaming up.

"Look, is it okay if I hang out?" Jared asks, and he's addressing everyone, but his eyes are fixed on Jensen. "I understand if you don’t want—"

Aldis crooks a grin. "I got no problem with it, but Jensen's boyfriend might object."

Jared's face falls until Danneel slaps Aldis's chest and then continues for him, "There's a seal who's in love with Jensen that generally comes up to nap on him at around this time every day, so as long as you're not afraid of risking seal rabies, which may or may not be an actual thing, you're more than welcome."

"I'll take my chances," Jared says, smiling confidently, but then he looks at Jensen again, still anxious. "As long as you won't mind."

"Please stay," Jensen tells him, reaching out to take his hand. "I think Sam can handle one day without me."

"I don't know about that," Jared replies warmly. "I'd be pretty upset to have to give you up if I was him."

That makes Jensen flush from more than just the sunlight, so he turns his face away, trying to check his smile.

"Holy crap, Jensen still likes someone the morning after," he hears Danneel whisper to Aldis. "Who is this guy? Is he one of yours? I need references."

"I've never seen him before," Aldis replies, turning onto his stomach to take a sun nap. It's pretty clear his interest in the situation has just about tapered off, but Danneel isn't letting it go, which is not surprising at all.

She watches as Jensen makes space on his oversized beach towel for Jared, and Jared repays him by promising to rub sunscreen wherever Jensen can't reach.

"Wow, this is super gross," Danneel says cheerfully. She turns to Aldis. "Look, babe, they're like as gross as we are."

"Why don't you give them some privacy?" Aldis suggests, his words obscured by the fact that his face is buried in his arms and is apparently not coming out until he's slept off his hangover.

"As if I would," Danneel replies, and then she launches into a list of questions to determine whether Jared is worthy of Jensen that goes on for the rest of the day.

Well, Jensen can't fault her for that. He did the same to Aldis and every other serious boyfriend she's had since middle school, and Jared bears it well, replies with easy jokes that manage to seem like they're answering more than they do. Somehow he charms Danneel and makes it through the day without having to lie to get around all the questions Jensen knows he can't give an honest answer to.

"What was that?" Jensen asks as he pushes Jared up against the hallway wall, knocking over some piece of beach house kitsch.

Jared laughs, the sound cutting off and turning into a sigh when Jensen's mouth finds the nape of his neck.

"Was it okay?" he says. "I didn't mean to stay all day. I swear I would have left if I—" Jared grunts and pulls Jensen back, big hand tangled in Jensen's hair. "Jensen, you're not upset with me, are you?"

"Of course I'm not," Jensen tells him, rising to his toes enough to press a gentle kiss against Jared's mouth and then turning to walk the rest of the way to his bedroom. "Of course not. I just didn't expect it. Yesterday you tell me you've never even spoken to a human before, next day you roll up on the beach and want to sunbathe with us. Wearing the ugliest shorts on the planet instead of your sealskin."

"There weren't all that many options at the pharmacy I wandered into," Jared says in defense of his terrible swim trunks. "Besides, I kinda like them."

"See, this is a teachable moment," Jensen replies. "A real human would never admit that."

"I'm starting to suspect my teacher is kind of a jerk." Jared speaks directly against the shell of Jensen's ear, giving it a small bite after and then sucking lightly to soothe it.

"Fair enough," Jensen admits as a wave of arousal passes through him. "But the point stands."

"Did I do okay?" Jared's hand slips down, rests on the small of Jensen's back, and Jensen is still unsettled by how centering Jared's touches feel to him. He hardly knows the guy, for crying out loud. "I passed for human, right?"

Jensen huffs a laugh against Jared's collarbone and turns his face, letting some of his weight rest against Jared's body as he settles into Jared's embrace. "Well, I think you would have really had to screw up for Danneel or Aldis to suspect you weren't human, but brunch was definitely interesting."

When Jared pulls away, Jensen gets a look at his smile, even as Jared tilts his face down, trying to hide it. His cheeks are turning pink. "I'd never seen a fish like that!"

"You mean cooked?" Jensen teases, grinning as he remembers how Jared had pressed his face up to the plate, only an inch away, sniffing at the halibut in his tacos and swiping his tongue out before Jensen was able to get his attention and demonstrate how to eat one without looking like it's his first day of human school.

"Well, I know now," says Jared. He smirks and lets out a soft burp. "I learned so much today. Like that I really, really enjoy tacos."

"I know. You ate half of mine after you finished yours." Jensen pretends to pout as he takes Jared's hand and leads him across the room, sitting at the edge of his bed. "And I think Aldis was starting to fear for his, too."

"Yeah. At least I figured out that it wasn't good etiquette thirty seconds before I actually grabbed his plate."

Jensen laughs and watches Jared scratch the back of his neck. He plops himself down on the mattress so close to Jensen that half of his leg is overlapping. It reminds Jensen so much of how Jared flops over him in his seal form that he immediately rests his hand on Jared's thigh, instead of shoving him away like he would with anyone else who took up his personal space like that.

Jared's face is fixed somewhere across the room, but his voice has an uneasy edge when he says, "I didn't mean to embarrass you. I tried so hard not to."

"Hey, look at me," Jensen says and Jared obeys as if Jensen's the one who cast a spell. "I had fun today. My friends really liked you, and even if they didn't, it wouldn't matter, because I do."

"No, it does matter," Jared insists. "They have to like me. They have to, or—"

"Or?" Jensen asks, laughing. "Who cares?"

When Jared finally speaks again, he does so in a whisper. "I want to be a part of your life."

It would be a big enough statement coming from anyone Jensen met only days ago, but he knows without being told that it's a dangerously bold thing for Jared to admit. He stops to think for the first time just how big of a leap Jared took for him today: appearing in front of multiple people, interacting with them, trying to fit in. All for him. Jensen doesn't understand the risks Jared is taking, and a part of him thinks maybe he should push Jared away right about now—for both their sakes.

Instead, he slips an arm around Jared's middle and pushes him to the bed, kissing him as he curls his body over Jared. "Does that include me getting lucky?"

Despite what Jared's told him about his history with humans—which has been pretty exclusively about having sex with them—Jared frowns and pushes Jensen away a bit. "I can't—we can't do that, okay? Not yet."

"Why not?" Jensen asks, even as he sits back. "I thought you—"

"Don't make me explain," Jared says, his tone pleading. "Is it okay? Just for a few nights, if we don’t?"

"Of course," Jensen says, smiling and running his fingers through Jared's hair. "I'm not going to make you do anything you don't want."

"I do want," Jared assures him. "Believe me."

Jensen smiles at him, content to let it go for now, and relaxes back against his pillow, pulling Jared up the bed with him. Despite his own track record of fucking guys and then kicking them to the curb, he gets comfortable resting on Jared's chest, wrapping one arm around Jared's broad shoulder.

"Will you stay with me tonight?"

"I'll stay as long as I can," Jared promises.

He's there when Jensen falls asleep; he's gone by the morning.

_______________________________________________________________

High above the water, Jensen can hardly see anything but the curving road and the mountain jutting up one side as they navigate the highway. Even here, they can still smell the saltwater from the ocean, a fresh, unmistakable scent carried on the brisk breeze. They could probably hear beachy sounds of waves and seagulls, too…if they could hear anything except Jared, making up lyrics to songs he doesn't recognize on the radio, singing at the top of his lungs, about as tone deaf as they come.

"You know," he says, tugging Jared back into a sitting position. Jared plops down, easily led, as eager to smush himself into the nonexistent middle seat so he can press up to Jensen's side as he has been to stand up in the little red convertible they've rented and catch the wind in his hair.

Jensen's been trying not to liken Jared to animals too much despite the seal thing, but everything about him on this road trip has screamed puppy.

"What do I know?" Jared asks before Jensen gets a chance to finish his thought.

Jensen lowers his voice, even though the chances Aldis and Danneel will hear him in the front of the car despite the music and wind is slim. "Part of talking to humans is also knowing when to be quiet."

For a split second, Jensen catches a hurt little look on Jared's face, until he lifts his eyes and sees the devilish expression Jensen is aiming at him. Relief flashes in his eyes for only a moment before it's replaced by a shit-eating-grin.

"You love my singing, Jensen Ackles," he howls in tune to whatever pop song is playing. He leaps to his feet again, shaking his ass in Jensen's face even as Jensen scrambles to try to make him stay seated. "You think I have the voice of an a-a-a-a-a-ng-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-l."

"If I get a ticket because of him, you're paying it," Danneel shouts back to Jensen when she notices Jared in the rearview mirror.

Jared does them all the favor of taking his seat, but he doesn't do anything too crazy, like relax back or put on his godforsaken seatbelt. Instead he scooches all the way forward, until his head is resting on the shoulder of Danneel's seat, and begins fiddling with the ends of the scarf she has wrapped around her hair.

Jensen can see only the side of her pretty pout until she turns and lowers her chunky sunglasses to level him with a cutting glare. "And if he ruins my 'Hollywood starlet out for a joyride' look, there will be a reckoning."

Aldis huffs in amusement at everyone's antics, but gently turns her head until she's facing forward. "Alright, Marilyn. You're driving a highway that's curving up a mountainside in a very expensive rental car you insisted we get to complete your outfit, and a wrong turn could send us plunging into the ocean, could you keep your eyes on the road?"

"Oh, do you really think I'm a Marilyn?" she asks, as if she didn't hear anything else. Her lips curl up, and Jensen knows she's about to do her best to annoy him on purpose. "I thought, at best, a Hepburn."

"Audrey outranks Marilyn any day," Jensen insists. "Katherine, too, going off any metric but fame."

The sunglasses cover Danneel's eye roll, but they've had this fight enough times that he knows it happened. She opens her mouth to respond as Aldis says, "Man, I am just not gay enough to fathom this argument."

Suddenly, Jared's hands let go of the fabric he'd been toying with and he points frantically to the side of the road the ocean is on. "Turn up here."

"You gotta be shitting me," Danneel says slowing the car to a crawl. Jensen can see her angling her head, trying to gauge how far the land stretches out before it turns into a cliff face.

"No, no, this is right. I can feel it."

"You can _feel it_ ," Danneel echoes, rising an eyebrow so far the edge of one is visible over the frame of her sunglasses. "Are you sure? Because I'm not really _feeling_ driving off the road and into the Pacific."

Jared laughs and turns to give Jensen an urging look.

"He's sure," Jensen says, not knowing how Jared knows, not understanding most things about Jared, but apparently willing to trust him with his own life and with his friend's lives.

By now, Danneel's stopped the car on the two-lane highway and is hesitantly preparing to drive off the pavement, onto a little patch of grass that doesn't show any signs that anyone has ever driven there before.

Of course, Jared never would have come here in a car. He would have been swimming. Jensen can't say that, so he joins Aldis and Danneel in holding their breath until they are successfully driving down an even, grassy patch—toward the ocean, but not as close as some of the other places where the road is pressed right up against it.

"Still haven't told us where we're going," Danneel mumbles.

"That's the point of a surprise, silly," Jared responds. After a few more moments of driving, he says, "Okay, park here and grab the camping supplies. We'll need to walk the rest of the way."

"Walk," says Danneel, nailing the drama of her ensemble. "Walk in nature?"

"You thought we were going to camp outside of nature?" Aldis asks.

Jensen hears her fire back, asking Aldis how much he'd like to sleep outside the tent tonight, and then Aldis reminding her who's going to be putting their tent together. But Jared takes him away from their bickering, grabbing Jensen's one empty hand on the side he isn't carrying any supplies and pulling him forward.

"We have to beat the sunset," he says urgently. "Want you to see it in the daylight."

Jensen doesn't ask again what exactly it is Jared's taking them to see, just lets him lead the way, the distant buzz of insults reassuring him that Danneel and Aldis are keeping up.

They don't have long to walk. The terrain is rocky but Jared is sure of his feet, so Jensen follows until they reach the top of a huge hill that goes all the way down to the water. Here the seawall isn't steep like it was along most of the coast they drove today, and instead of a sheer rock face, the entire way down to the water is dotted with wildflowers, orange and red and purple. Jensen is standing just inches from a batch of big white ones with bright yellow centers.

Danneel bumps into him when she and Aldis finally catch up, not intentionally to be a pain in his ass for once, but because her mouth is gaping open and her eyes wide as she stares at the sight, too awed to pay attention to where she’s putting her feet. There’s no smartass remarks now from anyone, the beauty of the landscape too overwhelming for even Danneel to make a joke out of.

The four of them remain in a companionable silence as they set up camp. It's the golden hour by the time the tents are pitched. Jensen exits his and Jared's, admires his handiwork, and then turns to see that Jared has set up a little spot for them all to sit while they watch the sun begin to set.

He joins Jared, and, a few minutes later, Aldis and Danneel do, too, wordlessly handing them beers that are dripping wet from ice that melted in the cooler on their long drive.

Danneel is the first to break the silence. "How did you even know about this place?"

Jensen turns to look at Jared, hoping to get a read on whether he needs Jensen to change the subject or not.

Jared just shrugs. "I've been here a long time."

"I didn't realize you were local," Danneel says, laughing and giving Jensen's shoulder a light slap. "Jensen hasn't told me anything about you."

"There's not a lot to tell," Jared says, but the way he catches Jensen's eye, the appreciative glint Jensen sees, speaks volumes. They both know there's plenty Jensen could say about him, but Jensen holds Jared's secrets close to his heart, hidden as well as Jared's second skin. "My family came here from far away. I hardly remember where I'm really from."

Danneel nods, probably assuming Jared was a baby, but Jensen can't help wondering what the truth is, how many generations of human lives have to pass for someone like Jared to forget his own home.

"Well," she says, and Jensen is expecting a joke, but instead, she sounds uncharacteristically earnest, "this is really beautiful. Thanks for sharing it with us." She leans to rest her head on Aldis's shoulder, and in a dreamy voice adds, "Can you believe this vacation is almost over? I feel like we just got here. Gonna miss this place."

"Almost over," Jared whispers, flinching as he looks up at Jensen.

Jensen realizes then that they haven't really confronted the reality of the fact that this was just a trip for him. His time here was always finite. Intellectually he knew, just as he knows Jared did. But he hadn't let it sink in, hadn't let himself imagine crushing this beautiful budding thing between them when it's just hardly started.

Jared stands and goes into their tent without saying another word. By the time Jensen joins him, the tears on Jared's cheeks are dried tracks and Jensen doesn't draw attention to them as he adjusts himself to Jared's arms and turns onto his back to stare up at the stars through the tent screen.

He feels a soft kiss press to the top of his head and it pains him to smile.

_______________________________________________________________

At the crack of dawn, Jensen awakes to the sound of the tent zipper and has to do a double take before it computes that Jared is not next to him anymore. That was the sound of him stealing away, same as every morning.

He briefly debates giving Jared his privacy, but he's too curious, tired of falling asleep with that solid body next to his and waking up with nothing but a cold draft where Jared's left the sheets turned back.

So he slips out just a bit behind and sees the outline of Jared’s body as he disappears down the rocky slope into the ocean. He follows, careful because he knows by now that just because Jared has no problem walking somewhere doesn't mean he'll be as safe.

Jensen only goes as far as needed to be sure he won't wake Danneel and Aldis, and then he calls out to Jared, not wanting to follow somewhere he's unwelcome or for Jared to feel like Jensen is trying to sneak up on him.

Jared stops in his tracks and turns to face Jensen. He presses the palm of one hand to his forehead and makes a face like he's trying to stop something. "I can't tell anymore if you're getting closer to me," he says. "I just hear it all the time."

He doesn't have to ask what it is Jared is hearing, but he does frown as he walks forward to close the gap between them. "It must be pretty annoying, huh?"

"Annoying?" Jared asks with an inflection like Jensen's just said the single stupidest thing he's ever heard. "How could it ever be—?" He frowns. "I just wish I could get away from it long enough to get used to…" Jensen watches Jared's lips twist until finally he says, "You're leaving soon."

"I don't have to." Jensen hears the words before he thinks them, before he even stops to consider what he's offering. And suddenly his mouth is on a marathon, building a future while his brain is just trying to catch up so he can assess if it's actually feasible. "Danneel only got a month off work, but I don't have to get back to teaching until the start of September. I could rent the house out longer, book a new flight. I don't have to go back this week. We could have months."

It would take all of his savings just to cover the rent on the cottage for that long without a roommate, but the savings exist. The royalties on his book would probably cover food, as long as he's frugal. It'll be tight, but worth it to keep Jared just a little while longer.

He steps forward now with more confidence. "I can stay."

Jared blinks at him a few times like he's been stunned, but gradually a small smile appears on his lips, and it's not long before he's showing teeth. "You would do that for me?"

"I think I'd do a lot more than that for you," he answers honestly.

Instead of accepting, Jared reaches out and takes Jensen's hand in his, tugging lightly. "Come here," he says softly. "You can see."

They follow a slipshod stone stairway down and around narrow passages along the face of the cliff, until finally they turn around one last twist. As soon as the rock blocking his view is cleared, Jensen stands in idiotic shock as he stares out on a small bay, the first rays of the day's light illuminating a shipwreck that must be hundreds of years old.

"Holy shit," he says. "This is so cool. We have to get Danneel and Aldis so they can—"

"No," Jared says, shaking his head apologetically as he starts walking again, pulling Jensen with him. "They can't come here. No one can. No human has ever seen this."

"It's hidden for a reason," Jensen guesses.

Jared nods and, as they approach the ship, he starts to strip, tossing his shirt and then his shoes and socks onto the sand. "You'll get wet."

"Wait, you mean we're actually going to go on that thing?"

Instead of answering, Jared heads into the water and starts wading toward the ship, so Jensen does the same, but all the way he's shouting a list of concerns to Jared's uninterested back.

"It doesn't look structurally sound," is the one he's reached when he catches up to Jared at the ship's entrance. "I'm sure pieces have drifted off or been eaten away by sea creatures. What if I fall through a hole in the floor and get trapped and drown?"

"Trust me," Jared says as he puts two big hands on either side of a break in the ship's bannister and pulls himself up onto the sunken deck.

"Don't put your hands there!" Jensen tells him. "You'll get a splinter."

Jared huffs a laugh, reaching down so Jensen can take his hand and be pulled up instead of having to touch the rotted wood. "Trust me."

Jensen does. He finds himself standing on what must have been a pretty decent ship in her day, and he looks around, most of his anxiety giving way to how _cool_ it is.

"How did you find this?" he asks, following after Jared, who seems to be on a mission.

"We followed it here from the Old World," Jared tells him, like that's just a really casual thing to say. "Not on purpose. One of us was chasing a sailor's song, the rest of us were keeping an eye on her, and," he laughs fondly, shaking his head the way people usually do when they're telling stories about a drunk college friend's antics, "she followed it further than we expected."

"So you just stayed?" Jensen asks before the rest of it computes. "You swam here from _Europe_?"

"Oh, sure," Jared says. "I mean, the ship made plenty of stops when going around Africa and up through Asia. We had time to rest. It was certainly an unusual migratory pattern for us, but actually quite a pleasant way to see new places. Did you know the water near Australia is nothing like—what? Why that face?"

Jensen can't contain the laugh that he's been shaking trying to keep down. "It just seems like a little much, following a ship so far because of one song."

"Genevieve is a little like Danneel. Once she's decided something, she's decided. And, well, we weren't just going to leave her stranded in some strange new land without her harem." Jared says this last part like it's the most obvious thing in the world, because Jensen's the one being illogical, apparently.

"What about sharks?" Jensen asks in distress. "Sharks eat seals all the fucking time. Did you even think about that when you were chasing the HMS Bad Idea across four oceans?"

"Sharks don't eat selkies. They respect the sacrosanct better than humans do."

"They eat people," Jensen points out.

"Yes, well, people are rather dreadful and seals are just animals, like any other," Jared explains. "Selkies are untouchable by your natural threats."

"Sacred," Jensen says and then he frowns. "Humans are the only things ugly enough to hurt you, aren't we?"

Jared shrugs. "That seems to be the way of it."

"And yet you'll pick up and migrate to a whole new world just to bring one sailor some peace." Jensen licks his lips. "What happened to him?" he asks. "When the ship…?"

Jared frowns. "She heard his song when the crash happened. It got louder suddenly, more distressed. She found him in time to save him. But the rest of the crew…they were so scattered. We didn't have any way to track them. We only found some of them in time."

"Seems like a sad way for it to end. After going all that way, to not finish the journey."

"Yes, I suppose." Jared turns the handle on a thick wooden door on the far side of the deck and it swings open. "But it gave us this."

Jensen follows him in but immediately steps back when he catches on to what he's seeing. Rows and rows of shelves, some empty, others with empty skins lovingly folded and placed on them.

"I shouldn't have come here," he says.

"I brought you," Jared tells him, pulling him back into the room insistently. He walks to the shelf where Sammy's face is peering out, smiling calmly. "This is our safe place to hide our skins now. We swim here to transform and no human has ever found any of us since we started. Gen likes to brag about that, as if her motivation in dragging us here was that she somehow knew we'd have a better hiding spot."

Jensen laughs, but he doesn't let Jared lighten the moment. It's too heavy a thing not to mention. "Jared, you brought me to your skin."

"I trust you," Jared says, running his hands over the smaller skin on the shelf next to his own. "You've told me all about your life. I wanted to share mine."

"My life is boring," Jensen says. "I'm from Texas. You swam from Europe."

Jared grins, pushing Jensen until his back is pressed against an old wooden wall. "That's boring to you because you lived it. Your tacos are as novel to me as my second skin is to you."

"Are you only dating me for tacos?" Jensen asks as Jared smilingly closes in on him, pressing his lips to the corner of Jensen's. "Be honest."

"Kiss me," Jared whispers and Jensen is too damn happy to comply.

They make out for a long while, until finally Jared breaks away with a sigh.

"I have to take my skin and go," he says.

"I wish you'd at least stay with us for the drive back," Jensen admits, not wanting to guilt Jared, not wanting to sound so damn needy, but not really able to help himself. He's unspeakably grateful for all the insight Jared has given to his world, for the fact that he brought Jensen here instead of turning him away. But it stings, too, knowing that if he hadn't followed, Jared would have snuck off and it would have been another lonely morning. He can't help that he wants more from Jared, wants all of Jared. He just can’t help it. "I don't understand why you leave me every morning."

"I know," Jared responds, his thumbs passing over the edges of Jensen's lips before he gives him one more fleeting peck. "I don't want you to understand."

Jensen nods and watches Jared pull Sam into his arms. "The others will wonder where you went."

"Make something up," he says as he crosses the threshold of the door.

By the time Jensen is back on the ship's deck, Jared has disappeared into the waves. Jensen looks out over the side and doesn't even see the speck of a seal swimming away from him.

He makes the challenging trek back to the camp and finds that Aldis and Danneel are already up. Danneel is sitting on a rock and frying eggs over a small camp stove while Aldis takes down their tent.

"Oh, hey. You're awake? And…already went for a swim?" Her face looks like Jensen just grew a second head. "Since when do you get up before noon?"

"We tried to wait for you before starting breakfast," Aldis clarifies as he folds up a cover. Then he clears his throat and throws Jensen a conspiratory look. “Someone decided she needed to eat regardless of who was still sleeping.”

"Or hiding in their tent doing sexy stuff. I was gonna poke my head in to check, but Aldis voted no and then he voted no for you and Jared, so I was outnumbered." She looks around, like she's just noticed Jensen is alone. "Hey, where _is_ Jared anyway?"

"He had to go home. Family emergency."

"What, did he walk?" she asks. "We're in the middle of nowhere. You could have gotten me up, I would have driven him back. Is everything okay?"

"Yeah," Jensen says, waving a hand at her. "His, uh. Sister. Went into labor early. But the doctor thinks the baby is going to be fine. So someone—I mean, his brother? His brother picked him up to take him to the hospital."

She stares at him for a long minute, possibly considering which of the holes in his story—like the fact that they're so far off the map it would be impossible for anyone to find Jared, hours away from the little town she thinks Jared's family lives in, or that Jensen was approaching from the opposite direction of where the road is—she wants to apply pressure to. But finally, she just shrugs and says, "Okay."

Jensen lets out a relieved breath and sits down on the ground next to her rock. "You making me breakfast, too?"

"Sure," she says. "I brought enough to feed a small army, because I've seen how Jared eats. I was pretty proud of myself for thinking of others, so of course the guy disappears before I can feed him."

Jensen laughs, and Danneel looks up at him, casts an eye out to make sure Aldis is distracted, and then she gives him a private smile. "You're different around him, you know."

"Oh, yeah?" Jensen asks, just waiting to be teased. "How so?"

"You're so much freer. Yesterday in the car, I couldn't believe how much you were letting him get away with. You're usually so stressed about obeying rules, but instead you let loose and laughed at all his antics." She shrugs. "I dunno, I'm not trying to make a big deal of it or anything. I know you hardly know the guy. I just think he's good for you is all."

Jensen smiles, mostly to himself, but he nudges Danneel's calf playfully. "You being sincere is weirding me out a little."

"I like him," she says. "Is that so wrong?"

"No, I'm just not used to hearing you go more than three minutes without insulting someo—"

"He can't sing for shit, though," she interrupts in a more patently Danneel tone. "You gotta do something about that."

Jensen laughs as he rests his head against her thigh and stares into the low flame on the stove. "That's more like it."

_______________________________________________________________

"Well, hello there," Jensen says, pulling back his hand so the seal sniffing at his ice cream doesn’t get any bright ideas. “What’s your name?”

“That’s a regular seal, dumbass,” says Jared, appearing at his side. “It’s not going to answer you.”

“You knew I talked to random seals when you decided to date me, Jared,” Jensen reasons. Then he grins. “Oh, I get it. Are you jealous? You think I’ll leave you for this little stud?”

“Mmm, aren’t you the one that’s always going on about catching diseases from wild seals? I’d be careful around that little stud if I were you.”

“Well, how am I supposed to know if it has seal rabies or not?” Jensen asks. “Y’all look the same.”

“That’s hurtful,” Jared informs him.

Jensen huffs a laugh at Jared’s show of being offended, then turns back to the seal that’s attempting to inch closer for a bite of his cone. “This one acts exactly like you did. I have no reason to suspect it’s not a selkie.”

“This is obviously a boy seal,” Jared points out. “You can tell by the size alone. Thus, clearly not a selkie.”

Jensen squints at Jared for a few seconds to try to gauge if he’s joking and when Jared’s expression doesn’t change, he goes ahead and explains the obvious. “Jared. You are a boy selkie.”

“Yeah, so imagine the absurdity of stumbling on another one!” Jared laughs at Jensen’s confusion and takes his hand as they walk down the boardwalk, not caring that Jensen’s fingers are sticky with melted ice cream. “I’m a very rare and majestic creature, you know.”

“Well, naturally I suspected.” Jensen leans on the wooden fence and stares out at the seal habitat they’ve come to visit. There are dozens of little brown and gray seals dotting the sand below and a handful of them up here where the humans walk, bolder than the rest in their pursuit of dropped snacks. “How many of them are selkies?”

Jared’s eyes scan the crowd until he points to a small group lumped together a little ways from the people and the other seals. “Most of us keep to ourselves and don’t come up here at all. But those ladies are all from my harem.”

Jensen counts four and then says, “Friends of yours?”

Jared grins as he draws attention to one of the smaller seals. “See that one reclining on the rock like she’s starring in a Vogue photoshoot? That’s my Genevieve.”

From here it’s hard to tell, but Jensen thinks he recognizes the seal’s face from the shipwreck, the one whose skin Jared had been absently petting as he spoke to Jensen.

“So she’s the one I have to thank for bringing you to me?” he says, popping the last bite of his ice cream cone into his mouth before wrapping his arms around Jared’s middle.

Jared laughs. “Yeah, that’s the one.”

“And your family?” Jensen looks up at Jared. “Are they down there with her?”

“My family?” Jared replies, like the question confuses him. Jensen regrets asking a moment later, when Jared suddenly looks sad. “I lost all of them a long time ago.”

“I’m so sorry, Jared,” Jensen says. “How did they—?”

“They didn’t die. Well, not that I know of. My mother and several generations of grandmothers all stayed behind when we left. None of us knew we’d be gone so long.”

“And your father?”

Jared grins. “I already told you. No male selkies. Whoever he was, he was just a human, not part of our world. My mother went to his song and that was that. He must have died a long time ago, but I never knew who he was. Never really wondered.”

“I don’t understand. If there are no male selkies, then how are you here?”

“Because I’m a freak, Jensen,” Jared explains cheerfully. “Not the only male selkie to ever be born, but one of very few. I caused quite the confusion when I came out like this. Selkie harems don’t generally have protocol for men. They had to take a vote on what on Earth they were going to do with me.”

“Did the other selkie children make fun of you growing up?” Jensen asks mockingly.

Jared rolls his eyes.

“So explain it to me,” Jensen says. He waggles his eyebrows. “I’m very invested in selkie mating habits.”

“Well, usually we go to a song and we make love and that’s that. Obviously, if it’s a heterosexual coupling, it sometimes produces offspring. If a selkie gives birth to a girl, she’s a selkie. She joins the harem. Everyone dances to celebrate her arrival. If it’s a boy, he’s human, so he’s left at the father’s door. A human wouldn’t belong among us.”

“That seems kind of…sad,” Jensen says. “Don’t the mothers miss their sons?”

“They aren’t really _theirs_ in any real way,” Jared says. “Just as our girls don’t belong to their fathers.”

“That doesn’t seem right,” Jensen insists.

“Well, your human conception of family can’t cleanly map onto every creature on the planet,” Jared points out.

“I guess that's true,” he says. “It just gets kind of complicated when we’re crossing species lines.”

Jared gives Jensen a look Jensen doesn’t really know how to read and says, “More than you know.”

“So what about you?” Jensen asks. “What happens if a male selkie gets a woman pregnant?”

“A human couldn’t give birth to a selkie. My offspring would all have belonged to your species.”

“And it doesn’t bother you that you could have kids out there? Grandkids? Entire generations that you’ll never know?”

“It didn’t until you put it like that,” Jared says frankly, stopping as they near the end of the boardwalk. “Maybe I’m more animal than you’re giving me credit for.”

Jensen considers that and feels his cheeks flush. Sam was always more human than an average seal. There’s no reason Jared should fit into what Jensen expects from a human just because he looks like one. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to disrespect your culture. It’s just…very different.”

“It’s not perfect,” Jared agrees. “Just as yours isn’t. But it’s how we do things.”

“So when you were born?” Jensen prompts.

Jared casts a look out at the ocean. “When I was born with my sealskin, it caused an uproar. Some of the elders thought I should be left at my father’s door like any male.” He shudders. “Without my skin. Just a baby. It would have been a very cruel way to kill a child. Others argued that it would be cleaner just to slit my throat, end my misery before it starts. Fortunately, a small majority decided I should be kept and treated like any selkie would. Some even danced for me.”

“You’re a miracle,” Jensen says, looking up at Jared’s gorgeous face, feeling his chest ache with the knowledge that Jared might have been put down in infancy, hundreds of years before Jensen could touch him. “Even more than I realized.”

Laughing, Jared seems to come out of a trance. He wraps his huge arm around Jensen’s shoulder and squeezes him closer. “My mother used to tell me I was different because there was a need for someone like me. That the elders hated me because they knew I would answer songs they couldn’t. I didn’t know what she meant for a long time.”

“Now you do?”

Jared tips Jensen’s face up and kisses him. “The others heard your song, Jensen. They heard how beautiful it was. Everybody wanted to go to it. But it was only for me.”

_______________________________________________________________

“Ever since Danneel left, there’s nothing to eat in this house,” Jensen announces to no one in particular. “I’m probably gonna starve to death. I don’t know for sure. Let’s just wait and see.”

Jared was upstairs in their room the last time Jensen saw him. He was curled awkwardly on the bed, napping in the one sliver of sunlight shining through the window like a smug kitten. So Jensen thinks he’s only complaining to himself until he feels the sudden pressure of a hand on his chest from behind, the whoosh of air as he’s pushed, and then the cold sensation of metal at his back.

Jared pins Jensen to the fridge with one huge arm on either side of his face, and Jensen grins, liking the danger he's in.

“I still see one delicious thing to chew on,” Jared threatens, letting his teeth graze the shell of Jensen’s ear.

"If you bite me, do I get seal rabies?" he asks.

Jared’s laugh kills the mood a little as he lets his head drop, pressing his forehead against the fridge by Jensen’s face. "I gotta say, your fear of seal rabies is way disproportionate to the threat.”

"Nuh uh," says Jensen, squirming like he's trying to get free of Jared's trap. "I googled it. It's totally possible. Oh, or! What if you bite me and I turn into a seal? What if that was your plan all along?"

Jared is laughing breathlessly as he closes the space between them. "I'm supposed to be the one of us that doesn't know when to shut up."

He silences Jensen with a bite to his bottom lip, then quickly changes to a kiss. Jared goes deep fast, like he doesn't doubt that Jensen is his to dig into, and Jensen feels like sunken treasure, like there was this whole inestimable part of him buried out of reach, and finally someone's noticed it, has decided to pull it up to the surface. Every second Jared kisses him Jensen swears he gets that much closer to coming up for air.

It’s already been two weeks since Jensen extended his trip, and already it feels like he and Jared have been doing this forever. Isolated in their own little bubble, almost no contact with the outside world—Jensen thinks, on the surface, he should feel more alone than before. Instead, guiltily, he’s relieved to be free of his friends, his family and co-workers, all the well-meaning people who love and care about him and yet don’t understand how to take him out of his head the way Jared instinctively does.

This won’t last more than a few months. He keeps reminding himself of that, so it won’t sneak up on them like last time. Jensen knows this isn’t real in that sense. Still, he’s clinging to it as long as he can, trying to deny it’s the antidote to a life he didn’t realize was defeating him until Jared dragged him out enough to see it. Because now he knows and now when he pictures going home, it doesn’t feel like the kind of thing he can survive.

His phone starts vibrating in his pocket, and Jensen breaks the kiss just long enough to check the caller ID. It’s Jeff calling from his New York office. Jensen hardly remembers the person he was a month ago, the crippling anxiety a call from his agent would have caused, how he would have interrupted anything to answer.

Now, Jensen rejects the call and tosses the phone on the kitchen island, turning Jared’s face back to his when Jared’s gaze refocuses on the phone skidding across the counter.

“Where were we?” Jensen asks.

Jared grins and picks up where they left off.

_______________________________________________________________

Nothing about this is a good idea.

Swimming in the ocean in general, if one takes a step back to really think about it, is not a great idea. There’s some weird shit in the ocean. Sharks aren’t even the worst of it. There’s jellyfish to sting you, or you could step on a crab and lose a toe, or be stabbed in the heart by a stingray like the crocodile guy. There’s eels and those nightmare fish with the glowy fishing rods growing out of their foreheads and—

Jensen is suddenly splashed by what feels like 500 gallons of ice water.

And there are idiot boyfriends to consider.

He shakes the water out of his hair and says, “You do that one more time and I swear I will end you.”

The seal floating a few feet from Jensen stares at him innocently, which adds the threat of him looking _insane_ for picking a fight with a seal if anyone should happen to pass by.

“Don’t give me that look,” Jensen says. “I know it was you.”

Jared shakes his little seal head and looks so cute that Jensen can hardly stay angry at him.

“I told you I didn’t want to do this,” Jensen lectures. “’Let’s go for a midnight swim, Jensen.’ ‘We’ll have so much fun.’ ‘It’ll be so refreshing,’ you said. ‘It won’t be _that cold_.’ Wrong, wrong, and wrong.”

He flicks water at Jared. “I hope you’re having a good time, because I’m getting out and taking my frozen ass inside.”

At that, he turns and starts paddling to the shore. He should have known better, really, than to turn his back on Jared.

For his trouble, Jensen gets tackled to the ground, sand in his face, and a giant holding a heavy soaking sealskin resting on top of him.

“But it’s so romantic,” Jared coos in his ear.

“Can’t breathe,” says Jensen.

Jared rolls off of him but stays lying in the surf with the tips of the waves coming up just high enough to kiss his toes. “Look at how the moon shines on the water. Isn’t this just the greatest?”

“No,” Jensen grouses, settling next to him. “And if I get sand in my most sacred places, you’ll be sorry.”

He watches as Jared rises onto his elbows and gives Jensen a smarmy look. “I’d be happy to help you pick it out.”

Jensen makes a disgusted face and Jared laughs, pulling him in for a kiss. “Hey, what if I told you I can stay with you tonight? All night. What would you say to that?”

“I’d say that’s almost worth swimming in the ocean after dark.” Jensen bites his bottom lip and then leans in to kiss Jared’s nose. “Will you really stay?”

“Yeah,” Jared says, sitting up. “I’ll just stash this,” he says, lifting his skin, “and then I’ll hurry right back. Wait up for me.”

Jensen tries not to get too excited, tries not to think about what Jared might have in mind if he’s really going to sleep over. Because what they have—it’s great, it’s more than enough. But it’s been almost two months since the first time Jared kissed him, and so far, that’s as far as it’s gone between them. Jensen wants Jared more than he knew a person could want anything.

“I’m not sure what kind of ideas you’re getting about me,” Jared teases. He slaps Jensen’s ass to urge him back to the house and calls, “but get your pretty little ass back inside. I’ve got some ideas of my own.”

_______________________________________________________________

Two hours later, Jared has returned to him, seal-free. He lets himself into the house, so Jensen doesn’t realize he’s there until the bed dips and a great big hand pushes the book he’d been reading down onto his lap.

“I like the glasses,” Jared says, leaning in for a kiss. “Not digging the clothes as much.”

Jensen tosses the book onto the floor and sits up, pulling his shirt off over his head, all too happy to ditch the clothes. He reaches out for Jared and Jared falls into his arms, lips meeting as their bodies line up together.

“Fuck, Jared,” Jensen whispers.

“I know,” Jared says urgently. “I know.”

He shoves the sheets he’d been sitting under out of the way and grins at Jared, who is big, tan, perfect next to him, already in his boxers because wearing clothes doesn’t come naturally to him. When he moves toward Jared again, pushing him down into the mattress, Jared makes a satisfied, breathy sound and pulls him impossibly closer.

Jensen ducks his lips, bringing Jared’s forearm up to his mouth and pressing a line of kisses along the long slice of open skin.

Jared’s breathing gets unmistakably tense, so Jensen looks up to catch his eyes, make sure this is okay. He gets an encouraging smile and Jared speaks softly, “It’s supposed to feel _wrong_ being touched there. By a human.”

He rubs his face along the skin and asks, “Does it?”

“No,” Jared whispers. “It’s nice when you do it.”

Jensen can’t help his grin at that. He presses one last kiss to the broken skin and then turns to meet Jared’s mouth instead.

They kiss for a long time.

The kiss for a _frustratingly_ long time.

Jensen pulls back. “Jared, can we—?”

Jared shakes his head but holds Jensen firmly in place when Jensen tries to pull away. He’s hard as a rock in his boxers, as hard as Jensen is. Every indication since the first moment they set eyes on each other says that Jared wants him, but every indication so far has been wrong.

“You’re desperate for me, aren’t you?” Jared asks.

“Well, I wouldn’t have worded it quite like that, but,” Jensen grinds down, lets his erection press into Jared’s thigh. “Yeah, a little.”

“I want to satisfy you,” Jared says. “So much.”

“But you won’t.” Jensen closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, trying to steady himself. He doesn’t want to pressure Jared. He just wants Jared to burn like he is. “Why not me? You’ve fucked so many people and you won’t even let me touch—”

As usual, Jared catches Jensen’s hand when it strays too far, trying to get a grip on Jared’s cock. He pulls it up and presses his lips to Jensen’s fingers.

“They weren’t special,” Jared says, rubbing his face against Jensen’s palm. “You’re special.”

“Then why don’t you want me?”

He watches Jared sit up against the headboard and give Jensen a troubled look. “Is that really what you think?”

“I don’t know what to think,” Jensen admits. “This seems like it should be pretty straightforward to me.”

“None of this is as simple as…” Jared frowns and looks away. “I wish I could explain. I wish I could make you understand how much I want you.” He covers his ears with his hands and digs his fingers into his hair. “Jensen, it’s driving me insane. Listening to your song, when you’re always so near, when it just keeps getting louder. Knowing how much you want me and…and I wasn’t made for denial. I’m physically in pain from how much my body needs yours. My blood is on fire every time I look at you.”

“I’m right here,” Jensen says, forcing Jared’s hands down and making him meet his eyes. “Jared, I’m right here.”

“I can’t,” he says, tone bordering on hysterical. “I can’t. You don’t understand.”

“So help me understand.” Jensen wraps an arm around his leg and rests his head on his knee, watching Jared. “You could at least explain it.”

Jared swallows hard and he doesn’t have to speak, doesn’t have to shake his head. The ‘no’ is clear in his expression. So is the fear that Jensen will keep pushing.

He can’t stand the thought of Jared being afraid of him. “You’ve told me so much. You can trust me with whatever else you still haven’t. But you don’t have to. It’s your choice.”

For a long moment, everything is quiet. Finally, Jared reaches out for him, his hand moving slowly to cup Jensen’s face. “We can’t fuck. And you can’t touch me. You have to promise you’ll stop trying. We will, eventually, I promise. Just give me a little while longer.”

“Of course.” Jensen leans in and kisses Jared, rests his forehead on Jared’s when he says, “I’m sorry I made you feel like I wouldn’t wait.”

“You don’t have to,” Jared says, like he’s just made up his mind. “I think…”

He turns until he’s pushing Jensen into the mattress, and then he’s kissing his way down Jensen’s body, muttering more to himself than to Jensen, “I can make you feel good. I think I can make you—”

He takes Jensen into his mouth and Jensen loses the ability even to moan. Jared sucks cock with hundreds of years of practice and his whole damn heart.

_______________________________________________________________

Jensen wakes up the next morning loose-limbed and it’s not until he realizes that the heavy weight around his middle is Jared’s arm that he remembers why. Jared’s lips on him, the way Jensen’s entire being had shaken loose with the force of his orgasm—it all feels like a dream now, too much to be real.

But Jared is still here. For the last two months, Jensen has wanted nothing more than to fall asleep in Jared’s arms and wake up with him still there in the morning. Now the sun is shining into his eyes, and Jared is _still here_.

He moves Jared’s arm so that he can sit up, giddy to take in the luxury of this morning. Jared rouses slowly, eyes fluttering open at having his arm disturbed, a small smile curling his lips.

He says, “G’mornin’.”

Jensen drinks in Jared's broad shoulders and chest, the deep cuts of muscle on his hips, and he sighs. Instead of returning Jared’s greeting he says, "Fuck, you're so beautiful."

"I know," is Jared's response, and Jensen's eyes jump up to his face, expecting to see a cocky smile at the turn of his lips, a playful sparkle in his eyes.

Instead, Jared is staring at the ceiling, looking weirdly distant, disconnected from what he's saying. "I've always been beautiful to humans. That's all I've ever been." His gaze shifts, directly to Jensen's, as if he could feel exactly where Jensen's eyes were on him. "I never minded before. It didn't matter what humans thought about me." He turns his attention back to the ceiling, resigned, and his voice drops. "I want to be more than that to you. But I don't know how. I don't know how to be anything but beautiful."

It occurs to Jensen that for all the good Jared’s done him, he doesn’t seem to know how to say anything to Jared without hurting him.

Then Jared blinks a few times and shakes his head, and the melancholy all scatters away as easy as if he’d shaken off raindrops. “Hey, I’m hungry.”

Jensen grins, because in this, at least, he knows how to make Jared happy. All he has to say is, “I bought bacon.”

_______________________________________________________________

“I’m bored,” Jared announces.

“I know,” Jensen tells him, calmly, trying his best to ignore the 200 pounds of nervous energy unsettling the room behind him. “I’ve heard.”

“Estoy aburrido,” Jared replies. “As the blessed creators of tacos would say. Oh, we should go get tacos.”

“We just had lunch two hours ago, Jared,” Jensen reminds him as he sifts through a stack of notes. God, his handwriting is atrocious.

“But that was _two hours ago_ ,” Jared says. Jensen hears rather than sees him flop down on the bed behind him dramatically. He tries to check his smile at that and is glad Jared can’t see his face, because he fails. “Jensen. Tá mé dubh dóite.”

“Of course you speak Irish,” Jensen says, holding one of his papers up to the light, trying to figure out if he wrote an L or an I in the third sentence from the top. “Aren’t selkies Irish?”

“Ik verveel me,” Jared replies. “That one’s Dutch. Guess what it means.”

“I can’t imagine,” Jensen mutters, giving up on that page of notes altogether and reaching for another one.

“Мне скучно.” He hears the creak of the bed as Jared sits up, then another creak as Jared begins to bounce on the edge of the mattress. “Je m'ennuie.”

“And what’s that?” Jensen asks absentmindedly. “Italian?”

“No, ‘che noia’ is Italian,” Jared informs him. “You weren’t even close.”

“I’m going to regret this,” Jensen announces to the room at large as he turns his swivel chair to face Jared. “But I’ll bite. You’ve never spoken to a single human being except for me. So how on Earth do you speak Spanish, Irish, Dutch, whatever that other one was—?”

“It was Russian,” Jared tells him flatly.

“Okay, Russian, French, and Italian?”

"The same way I speak Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, Swahili, Greek, Latin, Hindi, and over 400 other languages, of course!” Jared grins when that only makes Jensen roll his eyes, because he’s finally gotten exactly what he wanted: Jensen’s attention.

“I’m not going to beg,” Jensen informs him. “You have me for ten, nine, eight, seven...”

Jared crosses the room and takes a seat on his lap, kissing him and murmuring, “Твои очки меня заводят.”

“I don’t know what that means, but I’m going to assume it’s Portuguese for ‘I’m bored.’”

“No, my darling. That was Russian again. I said that your glasses turn me on.” He smiles as he removes Jensen’s glasses and puts them on his own face. “‘Estou aborrecido’ is Portuguese for ‘I’m bored.’”

“How helpful,” Jensen says, wrapping his arms around Jared’s hips. “I must put that into my lecture.”

“No, no, enough with the lecture,” Jared says. “Can’t you work on it—?”

“Tomorrow?” Jensen offers. “That’s what you said yesterday.”

Jared frowns and turns his face away. “Yeah, well…”

Jensen licks his lips. He knows that this is about more than Jared wanting attention, that the reason he’s in this mess to begin with is that he’s been as eager as Jared to pretend the summer will never end. Now he has two weeks until the semester starts and his syllabus isn’t planned, his lectures aren’t prepared, and he’d much rather keep giving Jared every minute of his time than focus on the cold reality of September looming on the horizon.

He pulls the glasses off Jared but folds them up and places them on the desk instead of back on his own face, signaling that he’ll take a short break from work. “Tell me how you speak a million languages, then.”

“Oh, there’s not much to tell. It’s easy to learn your human languages,” Jared explains as he leads Jensen to the mattress. “They’re very simple systems of expression. Bats, for example, are much more sophisticated. Once you’ve heard a person’s song, the language is only the surface of how much there is to take in.”

“That’s actually really interesting,” Jensen admits.

“Mmmhmm,” Jared agrees. “Теперь я тебе отсосу.”

“And what’s that mean?”

Instead of answering, Jared goes down on him. Jensen figures that one out for himself.

_______________________________________________________________

It seems like the most wasteful thing they could do with only one night left together is to spend it not talking to each other. Not looking at each other. Not enjoying each other.

Of course, that’s exactly what they’re doing.

For over an hour, they’ve been lying in bed together, bodies over the covers, close but parallel lines.

Jensen tries to think of something big enough to say. Imagines a place to touch Jared that could leave a lasting impression. Can’t let himself love another moment of Jared’s company, because tomorrow…

“Tomorrow,” Jared says, as if he’d read Jensen’s mind.

“Yes.”

Jared nods but keeps his eyes up on the ceiling, just like Jensen is doing. The silence descends again. It’s not a comfortable one, like so many they’ve shared this summer. It’s the kind that makes a person deaf.

Jensen envies Jared his song. He’d welcome any noise to drown out his thoughts.

“I can’t extend any further,” he says, as if Jared had asked.

“I know.”

“I have to make a living,” he adds. “The semester starts on Mon—”

“I get it.” Jared sighs. “We should be fucking. Might as well fuck you if you’re leaving tomorrow. Has to be tonight. All I’ve thought about for months and now the night comes, and I’m too miserable to even…” Jared laughs, the last thing in the world Jensen expects. It’s enough to make Jensen turn to look at him. “Do you want to know what the really stupid thing is?”

“I have a feeling I don’t,” Jensen says honestly. “Tell me.”

“It’s the first fucking note,” Jared replies.

Jensen gives him a confused look and Jared finally cuts a glance over at him. “It’s the first note of every song. You know as soon as you hear it that it’s not supposed to last. I knew before I opened my idiot mouth to tell you my name that I wouldn’t get to keep you. I knew. I should have just stayed away. Genevieve told me to. She said this would happen.”

His voice is tight when he replies, “I’m glad you didn’t listen.”

“I’d give anything not to feel this way,” Jared admits. “Half of me even thinks I’d give up knowing you, but…” He scrubs his hands over his face. “That’s not true, either. I would have done it differently if I could bear that.”

“Maybe I can come back,” Jensen offers. “I’ll find a new job, something on the water. We can—”

“That won’t work.” Jared runs his fingers over his arm, over the slit where his seal skin and his human skin connect. “You don’t know how wrong this is for me. Spending so much time in one body, sneaking off at night to catch a few hours in the other. Trying to ignore the agony of not fucking you. It’s not healthy for a selkie to live like this. It’s…too confusing. I can’t keep it up.”

“I can’t just leave you,” Jensen tells him. "I don't want to leave you."

Jared turns onto his side and searches Jensen’s face. “Take me with you."

“What? Jared, that’s crazy. I would have to—”

“I’ll _give it_ to you,” he insists. “All you have to do is hide it from me. I’ll go back for it if I know where it is. I won’t be able to help it. But if you hide it…” Jared licks his lips and nods, like this is a brilliant plan. “You could fuck me. As many times as you want. And I could go with you. Anywhere. Jensen, please. I’ll bring it here and you just have to hide it.”

“Isn’t it bad for you?” Jensen asks. “Isn’t it torture to have your skin taken?”

“No. Maybe. Who cares?” Jared’s eyes are shiny, brimming with tears. “ _This_ is torture. The thought of losing you is torture. Living by your side and not satisfying this need in my bones for you is torture. I can handle losing my skin. I can’t handle losing you.”

“It doesn’t seem right,” Jensen says, though rejecting this, when Jared is offering everything he’s, in his darkest moments, already dreamed of taking, requires every ounce of self-control he has.

"Please. I love you," Jared says. “I love you too much.”

Jensen swallows hard, turning so that he isn't looking at Jared, so that all he sees is the generic beach landscape hanging on the wall, which doesn't have wide, sad eyes and doesn't make him want to surrender to emotions he's too scared to even speak out loud.

"That's ridiculous," he says, as if he can't feel his own heart eroding in his chest, trying to find a way to stay with Jared's. He has to talk Jared out of this, and he can’t find a way without being cruel. "It's only been a few months. We hardly know each other."

"I loved you before I ever saw you," Jared says, tracing a pattern on Jensen's chest.

"I don't believe in that," Jensen says, and it’s true. He doesn't. He never did. So-called 'love at first sight' has always been a concept that makes him roll his eyes. The idea isn't even romantic to him. "Love isn't special if it just _happens_. You have to know a person. Jared, I don't know you. I know some things about you, and I like them. I want desperately to know you. I could fall in love with you, but we aren't there yet."

"That may be true for you," Jared tells him. "But I know exactly who you are. I knew the first time I heard your song. I know every part of you and you can't ask me not to love those things. I don't know how."

“The song,” Jensen spits. “I’m so fucking tired of hearing about this song. You don’t know anything about me. You don’t love me. You just love this stupid song.”

Jared smiles and leans over to kiss him, then kisses him again, the pressure of his lips so pretty despite Jensen’s ugly words.

“The song told me who you are. But if you think that was all…it gave me things to discover about you, Jensen, but I still had to learn how they manifested. I knew you were loyal, but not how you try to hide it behind all your insults. The first time I saw you and Danneel get into it with each other, I thought I could watch you two go for days.

“I knew you were afraid to take risks, but I didn’t know how bright your smile would get when someone pushed you to take one anyway. That you would follow the people you care about to the end of the Earth, bitching about how stupid it was the entire way. I knew you were brilliant, but I hadn’t read your book or seen the little scraps of ideas you litter the house with when an idea strikes you. I’ve wasted so much of my summer trying to understand your indecipherable handwriting just so I could read those damn notes.

“I love your song because I love you, Jensen, not the other way around. And I know one more thing about you. I know you don’t really believe for a minute that what I feel for you isn’t real. And that you’re only trying to push me away because what you feel for me is real, too. I even love you for that, you stupid asshole.”

Jensen laughs at the last part and wipes at his eyes, taking a deep breath. “Tell me what happens,” he says. “If we have sex. Tell me why you wouldn’t.”

“I told you in a way, Jensen. When a selkie hears a song, it’s a limited engagement. We go to it, we satisfy the person, we move on. If I get off with you and get back into my sealskin—”

“You’ll never hear me again,” Jensen guesses. At Jared’s nod, he ventures. “But if you love me, if it’s not just the song, who cares? Right?”

“I wish,” says Jared. “I would miss it. It’s a fucking masterpiece, Jensen. I wish you could hear yourself, I wish you knew how deep your beauty goes. But I would give it up if I could.”

“So what, you’ll hear someone else’s song eventually?” Jensen shrugs. “I don’t care about that. It’s one night. You could go to them and then come back to me. I can handle that.”

“Jensen, if I get back in my skin after we fuck, after all these months ignoring the call…it’s not an option. Okay? Just…trust me. That I won’t do. I’d sooner slice through my own throat.”

“Don’t talk like that,” Jensen says, reaching out to touch the delicate skin Jared just threatened. “Please, don’t talk like that.”

“Listen to me. I’ve lived a long, good life. I know how things would be without you, and I know how things could be if you’ll just trust me. I’m making a choice. Take my skin. It’s yours. I’m yours.”

Jensen grabs him then, pulls Jared into his arms, and kisses him with a monstrous need to claim him. “Yes,” he says, and, “I’ll keep you. I want to keep you.”

Jared’s elation seems to match his own, the dark cloud of tomorrow suddenly giving way to a future where they can be together forever, and happy. Jared digs his fingers into Jensen’s sides painfully as he pulls their bodies flush together, and he whispers, “Take every part of me, Jensen.”

He’s got one arm full of Jared and he won’t let go as the other one smacks his nightstand artlessly, until finally he finds the handle without looking, and he fumbles inside for the bottle of lube he used so many times at the start of the summer and never again after he met Jared.

The container gets snatched away so fast that Jensen is still processing that his hand is empty when Jared’s already sliding slicked up fingers into his own body.

“So much for romance,” Jensen jokes. “After making me wait all these weeks.”

“I know for a fact you’ve come plenty of times,” Jared says as he holds himself above Jensen, pushing into himself and then out again. “I haven’t come in _months_. Had you so close. Could smell you and touch you and taste you and I couldn’t—”

Jared throws his head back and makes a clipped sound of pleasure. Jensen tugs him closer, pushing Jared's boxers down. Wanting to watch, and, as soon as his eyes take in the sight, needing to be a part of it.

He grabs the lube from where Jared tossed it on the mattress and wets one finger, which he gently presses in next to the two Jared has worked himself up to. It’s amazing how receptive Jared is, that there’s no pushback or need to adjust whatsoever. Like Jensen isn’t even intruding, is a part of Jared just like the rest.

“Need you,” Jensen says, and Jared nods, a breathless “Uh huh” falling from his lips.

They both pull their hands back, Jared grabbing Jensen’s wrists and pinning them above his head as soon as they’re free.

“Let me,” he says.

Jensen nods, desperately wanting to give whatever Jared wants to take from him. Jared’s slippery hand wraps around his cock like it’s not even there, a ghost’s touch as it slicks him up, and thank god for that, because Jensen doesn’t think he would make it long, knowing how good Jared is with his hands and how desperate he is right now.

He’s thankful that they’d taken most of their clothes off when they’d gotten home from dinner, that it’s only his underwear between them now, and Jared has pushed that down far enough that Jensen shakes it loose from one leg and doesn’t care enough to do more than that.

Then Jared is above him, lining up, placing Jensen’s hands on his hips so Jensen gets hypnotized by the rhythmic sway Jared sets as soon as he sinks down onto Jensen’s dick. It’s not like anything Jensen’s ever felt before, a dance only Jared knows the moves to, and Jensen’s left feeling graceless, clumsy. Like he’s never done this before.

“Fuck,” he cries, throwing his head back. “Fuck, Jared. Oh my god.”

“Shh, my Jensen, don’t do that.” He feels long fingers tracing his throat. “Don’t look away from me.”

Jensen meets Jared’s eyes, drowns in the intensity of his gaze, the galaxy of colors swirling in them, as perfect and impossible to fathom as everything the man they belong to is doing to him.

“Jensen,” Jared whispers, his eyes dropping closed. “I didn’t know it could feel like this. It’s _never_ felt like this.”

Jensen can hardly believe that this is anywhere near as good for Jared as it is for him, but he lets all his defenses drop, hopes his expression can show Jared how much he feels, because the words don’t exist. Not in any language. He laughs to himself, wondering if maybe bats could get the point across, and Jared grins like he’s in on the joke as he drops down to kiss Jensen.

Their lips don’t separate again until Jared’s fingers curl around Jensen’s and he turns his face into Jensen’s neck. “I’m gonna come,” he says. “I need to—”

“Let me touch you,” Jensen begs. He doesn’t doubt that Jared could get off untouched, not after how long he’s waited. But Jensen’s waited, too. He’s spent two months trembling as their bodies rut together, keeping his hands to himself so that Jared wouldn’t get off. He doesn’t just want it to be his dick Jared gets off on. He wants to hold the proof of it in his palm.

“Yes,” Jared replies, frantic as he moves on Jensen. “Yes.”

Jensen takes his dick in hand, thumb circling on the head, tantalizing, until Jared’s whole body has slowed to match his rhythm. Once he knows he has Jared on the hook, he begins to stroke, steady as his wrist fucks Jared, and Jared’s whole body tenses on his, the need for release now as painful in Jensen as it’s been for Jared.

“Let it go, baby,” he says.

Jared’s gasp is silent when it happens, but Jensen feels a hot stream of come as Jared’s body begins to rock in time with his climax. The smile that breaks over Jared’s face as he flushes with his release makes Jensen think of the sunset they’d watched over the flower field, and he decides that the sun needs to step up its game after this.

He reaches out, cupping Jared’s cheek with his filthy hand, dragging Jared down for a kiss, until he licks the come from Jared’s face, and Jared just laughs at all of it, his voice so light and free. Jensen didn't realize that Jared had been holding back the whole time he knew him, not until he saw this easy happiness.

When they fall asleep, Jensen is still holding Jared, the mess of what happened between them bold and unaddressed. He wakes up with Jared still there, but they’ve both been wiped clean. As he sits up, Jensen realizes that’s not the only thing that’s different.

Jared’s skin is curled up on the desk across the room, a happy seal face smiling at him. Jensen slips out of bed as quietly as Jared had gone to fetch it and makes it disappear.

_______________________________________________________________

By the time Jensen is done getting dressed, Jared is no longer asleep. He turns over to face the bathroom and the closet Jensen has just emerged from, a book he’d been reading laid flat on his stomach.

When he sees Jensen, his smile is radiant—way too wide and bright for this time of the morning. Nothing about Jensen in his boring tweed suit is worthy of it.

“Look at you,” Jared says, leaning his face on his hand. “What a nerd.”

Glancing down at the brown fabric self-consciously, Jensen says, “It’s my lucky suit.”

“Lucky for your students, maybe.” He watches Jared bite his bottom lip and duck his head. “You really went all in on the sexy professor look, huh? The glasses, the scruff. Come here. Let me ruffle your hair up. It’ll make you look more absent-minded.”

“We can’t all lounge around naked like Michelangelo is going to swing by to sculpt us any minute,” Jensen says, stepping forward and leaning on the bed for a quick kiss. “Some of us have to actually go to our jobs.”

“That guy was all hands,” Jared says with a wink, and when Jensen gapes at him for a moment, he laughs. “I’m kidding, Jensen. I never modeled for Michelangelo.”

Jensen pulls his face back so he can look Jared over. Somehow, his massive size makes his nakedness seem more salacious, all that exposed skin, tan and toned and _tempting_. “You could have, though.”

“Of course I could, but Da Vinci paid better.” Jared pauses for a moment, then adds, “Now that guy really _was_ all hands.”

“I can’t even tell if you’re joking or not,” Jensen says.

“And you don’t have time to find out.” Jared tilts his head at the clock. “First day of school starts in forty-five minutes. You’d have to play hooky to learn the great mysteries of my past.”

Jensen whines and leans forward for another quick kiss, cupping Jared’s cheek. “We’ll pick this up when I get home.”

Jared agrees with a gentle hum as he traces the backs of his fingers on Jensen’s rough cheek. “You look so good,” he says. “I never thought…”

“Never thought what?” Jensen prompts when Jared doesn’t finish his sentence.

He watches Jared’s cheeks flush the color of coral as he says, “I didn’t think I’d ever get to see you in your real life, you know? The way you are at home. Part of something regular like this.”

Jensen gets that. Yesterday, he’d made himself a cup of coffee and stared for an hour before Jared finally woke up, just sat there drinking in the impossible sight of him swimming in Jensen’s dark blue sheets instead of dark blue ocean.

It felt then, as it feels now, a little like he’d gotten away with something. Stole this beautiful boy and brought him to a life he has no part in. But it’s Jensen’s life, and Jared asked to belong in it. Surely, he’ll fit. He has to fit. Jensen needs him to fit.

He shakes his head, not wanting to go down that road. “What about you? What are you going to do all day?”

“I’ve got a whole semester to get through.” Jared holds up the book he’d laid on his stomach, and Jensen realizes that it’s _Play It as It Lays_ , the first novel on his syllabus. “I want to be able to talk to you about your work.”

He says it shyly, like he’s worried Jensen will think it’s silly, and Jensen gives Jared a flurry of quick kisses before he finally tears himself away. He positions his bag across one shoulder, then walks to the other side of the room, tugging a book off the shelf and tossing it on the foot of the bed.

“You have the new copy I bought to take to class. Read this one instead. I put notes in the margins the first time I read it.”

Jared’s responding smile is only on one side, a single dimple popping out on his cheek, but there’s relief in his eyes, even if it’s mischief in his mouth. He reaches for the worn old book Jensen threw him, says, “As if I could read your fucking handwriting.”

_______________________________________________________________

For once, Jensen gets home and Jared isn’t sprawled on the couch under a pile of books waiting for him.

He sets his bag down by the door, letting out a long breath. It’s only Thursday of week three, and already he’s counting down to the end of the semester—and he hasn’t even had to start grading papers yet.

The solace after each long day, every unproductive, stalling class discussion, has been the greeting waiting for him as soon as he walked past the threshold of his house. An instant inundation of random thoughts and observations Jared had throughout the day, all that nervous energy flying at him, making him forget everything except the cadence of Jared’s voice.

“Jared, I’m home,” he calls.

“In here,” he hears from down the hall, so Jensen heads to the kitchen.

Jared is hunched over the round kitchen table, a stack of papers on either side of him, and Jensen grabs a glass of water before he heads over, standing behind Jared’s chair to try to see what he’s writing.

Over Jared’s shoulder, he notices that the scribbles spread out around Jared aren’t words at all. He picks one sheet up off the pile on Jared’s right, and there’s only one word on it, a name at the top of the page written in big, black letters. The rest of it is notes of music sprinkled across improvised bars that Jared has drawn unevenly on regular printer paper.

“Who’s Ruth?” he asks, and then his eyes move down the rest of the page. “You can write music?”

“Just another language,” Jared mutters as he continues to work on a line. He draws in two last notes and then puts his pen down, turning to Jensen. “Can you read it?”

Jensen knows a little something about singing, can even fiddle with a guitar, but he shakes his head. “Hardly. I’m not trained.”

“I’m writing down the songs I’ve heard. Making a record. I’ve had them all in my head for so long, but…I’m not going to live forever. They should be remembered. These people, their…souls, is that the word you use? It’s almost like their souls go on if people hear their songs, right?”

“Jared, that’s an amazing idea,” he says, looking at all the different sheets, utterly delighted by the thought of Jared finding a way to fill his days like this. He can’t resist teasing, though. “Weird that someone as in touch with music as you is so tone deaf, huh?”

“I know,” Jared agrees in an innocent tone. “Almost like a writer whose handwriting looks like chicken scratch.”

“Touché,” Jensen says, laughing so hard he has to reach for the table to steady himself. Once he’s under control, he grabs another of Jared’s papers and reads another name, ‘Brock’ this time. “Hey, is there one called Jensen?”

Jared takes the sheet out of his hand and lays it back on top of its pile. “Not yet. I had to make sure I could at least do the songs justice before starting that. These,” he gestures to the songs he’s already mapped out, “these are practice runs. Yours is going to be a masterpiece.”

Jensen smiles at that and presses a kiss to his head. Jared pulls out of the embrace, making a guilty face. “It was my night to cook, wasn’t it? Fuck, I’m such a deadbeat, I completely lost track of time. I’ll—”

He tries to rise from the chair and Jensen pushes him back down. “Stay. Keep working. I’ll make something.”

“You worked all day.”

“So did you, apparently.” Jensen smiles and heads for the fridge, opening it to take stock of what his options are. “You know, when I was writing my first collection of short stories in college, I once went three days without having a real meal. I didn’t notice until I put down the last punctuation mark that I’d been living off bags of Doritos.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad,” Jared tells him. “As long as it was the blue flavor.”

Jensen laughs. “My point is: I know what it’s like to get into the creative zone and forget everything else. I love that feeling. There’s nothing like it. I’m so glad you found it here.”

“Maybe you inspire me,” says Jared.

He’s changed his position now, so that his chair is angled more toward the counter and he’s turned around, sitting on it backwards. He looks so earnest that Jensen is a little embarrassed by it, so he deflects.

“I’m making kabobs,” he announces. “Tell me about the songs while I prep.”

So Jared does. He talks about Ruth, the first song he ever heard, a woman who had been the great beauty of her town when she was young, who had never had anything but her beauty, and about the loneliness of her life when she grew older, her husband’s attention turning to younger girls. Jared had been just a boy then, just what she needed to feel youthful and wanted, even if only for a night.

Then Jared tells him about Brock, a young man who’d lived in one of the fishing villages Jared’s harem had made a home by. “Looked a little like you, if I remember correctly,” Jared says as he speaks of the isolation he’d heard in Brock’s song, the confusion of wanting men and not knowing that was something boys could do.

He goes on and on, speaking of some of the other songs he wants to write down, until the food is ready. When Jensen brings him his dish, he catches Jensen’s wrist and looks up to meet Jensen’s eyes. “Yours isn’t going to be a song. It’s going to be a symphony.”

_______________________________________________________________

Autumn is in full swing the first time he catches Jared at the window.

It's been thirty minutes of Jensen going on about his students, from the most promising, Colin and Felicia, to Jake, the jock who'd taken the class for an easy A, or so Jensen had assumed, but who has so far turned in some of the most compelling free writes he's seen since he started teaching.

He’s well into his rant before he realizes there haven't even been token sounds of encouragement and sympathy out of Jared.

By now, Jared should have at least told him how boring he was or made some attempt to distract him from his workday.

Instead, he’s been standing preternaturally still as he gazes out at...

Jensen goes to stand by him, to see if there's a funny squirrel or a cat fight to hold his attention, but there's nothing, just a yard full of unraked leaves, typical of Jensen's November landscaping. Jared's not smiling at small mammal's antics or doing much of anything at all. The way he's blindly observing the world is so blank, Jensen would call it dull.

'Dull' is never the word to describe Jared.

He reaches out, touches Jared's cheek, and Jared immediately turns toward the contact. Jensen watches for several long moments as Jared seems to return to himself, the way recognition slowly dawns on him.

"Jensen," he says with a smile, like he's only just realized Jensen is there, even though he greeted Jensen warmly when he'd gotten home.

"Yeah, baby," he says. "Are you okay?"

Jared's eyebrows draw together for a moment, like the question confuses him. Then he looks out the window again and says, "Yes, of course. Just..."

Jensen waits for him to finish. When he realizes there's nothing else coming, he tugs on the thick red knit scarf Jared has wrapped around his neck.

"Hey, you with me?"

"Always," Jared murmurs as he turns his body toward Jensen and angles himself down for a kiss. "I just hate winter, you know? I can feel it coming."

Jensen smiles, happy to take the easy explanation. Eager not to look too close at any cracks in what he and Jared have.

"I'll add that to the list," Jensen says and when Jared's expression is questioning, he grins. "Of things you hate. So far it's mostly been human things. Airplanes. Clothes."

"You have to wear _so many_ clothes in winter," Jared grumbles, looking down at himself, as if this is the most damning argument possible when it comes to picking favorite seasons. "In these bodies."

Jensen thinks of Jared in the California sun, how he'd been easy in shorts and a V neck shirt. His chest aches, and he says, "Why don't we go back to SoCal over the holiday? I bet I can get a deal on the same little beach house."

Jared shakes his head. "I don't think that's a good idea, but thank you for offering it, Jensen."

"How about Texas, then?" Jensen offers, shoring up his courage. It's something he's wanted to do for a while, anyway, but wasn't sure how to ask. "Nice and warm in Dallas, even in December. Comparatively, at least. You could meet my momma."

Jared smiles with approximately one million teeth and pulls Jensen closer, resting his head on top of Jensen's. "I would love that."

"Really?"

"Yeah." Jared takes his hand then and starts pulling him toward the living room, finally his animated self. "I have to show you this program I found," he says excitedly. "It lets you write music on the computer and then it plays it back, so you can at least hear some version of it. Amazing. You humans really outdid yourselves with the internet. More than makes up for airplanes."

Jensen laughs, and Jared goes on at a million words a minute, talking about all the projects he's worked on today. "I want you to hear a few bars of your song. I mean, it's not perfect, it's a very mechanical version, but still..."

Jensen follows, listens to him wax poetic, and is all too glad to leave the absent version of Jared he'd seen staring out the window behind like a ghost.

_______________________________________________________________

Jared has Jensen’s momma charmed within an hour of setting his shoes outside the door and stepping past the threshold. He’s liberal with his ma’ams, as if Texan was just another language he had stored away in his brain. He flirts shamelessly, making Momma blush and slap at him ineffectually. She likes that he eats more than his fill. When she asks questions that probe too deep, like where those dreadful scars on his arms came from, Jared makes up stories about falling off horses, disarms her skepticism that an accident like that would produce matched injuries on both arms with sweet puppy eyes and dimples, and she’s too overwhelmed to notice nothing is really getting answered.

Now she’s gone up to bed, one last “don’t you boys get into any trouble” and a big ol’ wink in Jared’s direction before turning in. Jared is walking slowly around the living room, looking too closely at pictures of Jensen and his brother growing up, toothless and scabby elbowed, and more often than not covered in mud.

“Oh, come on, at least don’t look at the ones from prom,” Jensen says, coming up to stand behind Jared and slapping the photo frame down as soon as he recognizes what Jared is smiling at.

“Why not?” he asks. “Danneel looks lovely.”

Jensen narrows his eyes. “Leave my poor little closeted teenage self alone.”

Jared laughs, but when he turns to catch Jensen in his arms, his voice has gotten softer, more serious. “Your father left, didn’t he?”

He winces at the observation, the one glaring thing that’s missing from every photo in the room. But Jared doesn’t let him go when he tries to break from the embrace.

“That’s why you got so upset, when you learned about selkie children. We left our sons, just like—”

“We don’t have to do this,” Jensen says. “It was different. I get that it was different.”

“Wasn’t really, was it?” Jared asks. He picks up the picture Jensen had turned down and runs his thumb over Jensen’s face. “I—there haven’t been many women, but there have been women.” He looks up at Jensen. “I heard a song once. Her name was Adrianne. She wanted a child. Not a husband or a father for the child, she just wanted a child. So I put one in her, and I disappeared. I abandoned it.”

“No,” Jensen says. “It’s different. You gave her what she wanted.”

“I thought it was good, I thought I was doing good. But maybe my offspring grew up hating me.” Jared frowns. “We aren’t allowed to talk to humans. Not even our own children. The rules are unambiguous. I believed it was right not to think of them as ours, because that’s what I was always taught. But maybe it was just easier.”

Jensen reflects on all the rules Jared never thought of breaking before, not even for his own children and how he hardly held back before breaking them for Jensen. He takes Jared’s hand and squeezes it and when Jared meets his eyes, he smiles.

“We have a pool,” he says, encouragingly. “We could go for a night swim. Would you like that?”

Jared still looks a little sad, and he gives Jensen a sharp smile as he shakes his head. “Pool isn’t really the same, is it?”

“I guess not,” Jensen admits. He drapes his arms around Jared’s neck and rises to his toes for a kiss. “We could have lots and lots of sex in my childhood bed.”

There’s a hot puff of laughter against his neck and Jared tucks his face there, holding Jensen too tight for a long minute before he pulls back and nods, his emotions back under control.

“Nothing turns me on as much as baseball print sheets,” he jokes, and they head upstairs. They skip the sex in favor of a good cuddle, and Jensen has mostly forgotten about the heavy moment by the time he wakes up, crushed under Jared and so happy he can’t breathe.

_______________________________________________________________

They hit the zoo the next evening, Danneel’s idea, because she wants to see the lights go up. Jensen agrees grudgingly; he’s been to the Dallas Zoo more times than he knows what to do with, but he hasn’t seen his best friend since the summer and if this is how she wants to spend her Christmas Eve, Jensen will suck it up.

Jared is having the time of his life, naming every animal Jensen and projecting Jensen’s behavior onto it. He’s all smiles and painfully dumb jokes, Danneel encouraging him and Jensen pretending to be annoyed. It’s way more fun than Jensen wants to admit he’s having as a grown ass man at the zoo.

At least until they turn the corner on the marine mammals exhibit and Jared stops dead in front of three seals huddled on a rock. Two of them are napping, but one is awake, sitting up, and it looks directly at Jared.

He walks toward the railing like he’s not even aware of it, nearly runs over a little girl with a Santa Claus ice cream pop. Jensen briefly considers following Danneel, who has already run down to the next habitat to wave at the otters, but ultimately decides to go stand next to Jared by the seal enclosure.

By the time he makes his way there, the seal has swum up as close as it can get and is trying to reach its little nose up to meet Jared, who is leaning in way over the rail, surely about to get lectured by security. There are kids standing to the side, pointing and yelling about the seal’s exciting behavior, but Jared doesn’t seem to notice any of it. He doesn’t seem to notice Jensen, either.

He’s talking to the seal, looking sadly around at its surroundings.

“They put you in this little cage and you’re just supposed to be happy.” He’s eyeing the smooth, fake rocks the other seals are still sleeping on. “They took your freedom, didn’t they?”

The seal is no selkie. It doesn’t nod or show the same intelligence Jared did when he was Sam. But it’s clear that even as a simple animal, it understands that it has a connection to Jared, and Jared looks so shaken. Like he’s the one in the cage.

 _Took your freedom_ , Jensen thinks, remembering Jared in the fall, staring out the window of his kitchen in Iowa. He stole Jared, wild and majestic as he was, and he landlocked him.

He puts his hand over Jared’s on the railing, and Jared jolts, like he’s just been pulled away from something. He turns to Jensen with an easy smile, as if he doesn’t even remember how thin his voice had been a moment ago, hardly on the right side of tears.

“No more making fun of me for talking to regular seals,” Jensen says with forced lightness.

_______________________________________________________________

The Men of Letters Publishing Agency has its big annual party every February. Jensen, as one of the young rising stars of their fiction department always has to make an appearance, shake hands and dance for his supper, making promising but unspecific statements about when his next manuscript will be finished.

To his credit, Jared’s doing a good job putting up with it. Not rolling his eyes when he has to watch Jensen have the same pretentious conversation with seven different groups of people. Most of his complaining was about Jensen making him get on _another_ plane to New York so short after their trip to Texas, and Jensen’s jaw is going to ache for months from all the blowjobs he’s giving to make up for that.

Jensen watches as Jeff walks off to speak to another client and then looks around, realizing that the party is winding down. For the first time in hours there isn’t a throng of people just waiting to pounce for Jensen’s attention. It can finally just be him and Jared, even if it's only for a few minutes.

"I realize that we should have made up a last name for you sooner, but Padalecki? Seriously?" He quirks his lips up at Jared, who is holding a napkin piled precariously with cocktail shrimp and chewing on the handful he’d already shoved in his mouth. "What, did you just say the first eighteen sounds that popped into your head?"

"That was the name of the ship that led us across the oceans," Jared informs him. "Learned that from staring at its giant wooden ass all those months. Anyway, I didn't see you offering any great ideas."

To Jared’s credit, he _had_ kind of just stood there with his mouth hanging open, going through and rejecting the first bland names that popped into his head.

"Great, so you're Polish now," Jensen says, laughing. "Let's see if I can remember 'Padalecki' for more than an hour."

“I’m very hard to forget,” Jared tells him through a mushy bite of shrimp.

Jensen sends a jealous glance across the party and can’t help asking, “Does Jeff have a song?”

Jared swallows the bite in his mouth, thank god, then asks, “What do you mean? I’ve told you, I only hear your song.”

“You clutched his arm when he first came up to us and gave him this _look_. I thought maybe you were hearing his song.”

He watches Jared ball up the now-empty napkin and toss it to the garbage as he throws his head back laughing. “Jensen, I don’t know if you realized, but Jeff is just insanely hot.”

Jensen snorts at that, assures Jared that he _had_ noticed, and the rest of the night is much more enjoyable, easier for Jensen to find only the people he genuinely likes once the crowd has thinned so that Jared can be a little more included.

Still, Jared seems reserved on the way home, and he heads to the hotel bathroom as soon as they’re inside. Jensen undresses for bed, reads for a bit before he starts to wonder what’s taking so long.

When he knocks on the bathroom door, Jared barely gives him a noise of acknowledgement to tell him to come in. He finds Jared with his arms braced on the counter, having a staring contest with himself in the mirror.

“Meet a hot guy in here?” Jensen jokes.

Jared doesn’t take his eyes away from his reflection. “Am I?”

“What? Hot?” Jensen leers. “Why don’t you come to bed and let me show you what I think?”

When he turns, expression slightly horrified, Jensen realizes he’s making light of the wrong moment. He has no idea what upset Jared, but that he’s upset is clear.

“All I was tonight was something pretty on your arm,” Jared says. “That’s fine. Someone like me...what else do I have to offer someone like you?”

“Is that really what you think, Jared?” Jensen asks, stepping into the bathroom. “Have I really not made it clear how much I love everything about you?”

“I don’t know,” Jared admits, and he looks truly lost. “I don’t know if I think that.” He runs his hands through his hair, clearly distressed by something. “I don’t think I’m thinking very clearly at all.”

Jensen frowns. “Jared, are you alright?”

Jared shakes his head and lifts his face to meet Jensen’s gaze. “I’m aging.”

Perplexed, Jensen says, “Don’t be dramatic. You don’t look any different to me.”

“To you,” Jared replies with a scoff. “I’ve seen the same face for hundreds of years, and today it’s different. Selkies only age outside of our seal skin. I’ve been out of mine so long that I’ve—” He turns back to the mirror and stares at himself. “Eventually, you’ll see it, too.”

“I don’t care,” Jensen says, and then he thinks about it a moment and changes his mind. “No, you know what? I love it. Jared, I _love_ that we’re going to age together. That I’ve gotten to keep you long enough that you’re changing with me. You’re always going to be beautiful, but that’s never been all you are to me. It’s not even the most important thing.”

Jared has a hesitant smile on his lips, like he wants to believe it. “Do you mean that? I wasn’t sure I’d live long enough to start to age. I just don’t want to let you down. If you want me for a body I can’t—”

Jensen shuts him up with a kiss, then drops to his knees and makes Jared _feel_ how much he wants him.

_______________________________________________________________

For spring break, they go back to Texas again. First they stop in Dallas, spend a few days helping Jensen’s mama with a few things she can’t do on her own. Jared wrestles Oscar and Icarus in the backyard while Danneel sits by the pool and complains that they don’t come to see her enough. It’s nice, but it’s not the real reason Jensen packed his poor boy onto a plane again.

He drives Jared to the coast for the last chunk of days he has off, giddy at the thought of finally returning Jared to the sea—not a pool or a spring or a lake, all those replacements that haven’t been enough. The honest-to-god Gulf of Mexico.

Jensen runs for the water ahead of Jared and turns once he’s waist deep, hoping to see the relief and excitement he expects when Jared is back in an ocean instead of marooned on dry land.

But as soon as Jared’s toes touch the salt water, he recoils as if it’s lava instead.

“I can’t go in there,” he says apologetically, taking a few steps back onto the sand. “I don’t want to go in there.”

Jensen feels his heart start to break, a budding acceptance of something he’s been trying hard not to face. He can’t truly understand what Jared means when he says it’s _not the same_ , which means he can't fix it.

_______________________________________________________________

Jared’s body is hot, fucking tight around him, and Jensen is close. He reaches out, traces the elegant line of Jared’s spine and moves down to press a kiss to Jared’s enormous back.

On all fours under him, Jared is bracing himself on the bed, shaking with the force of Jensen’s thrusts. Jensen realizes only when he whispers into Jared’s ear and Jared doesn’t answer that he’s been oddly quiet the whole time they’ve been doing this.

He wishes he could see Jared’s face, but this is how Jared wanted to fuck. It’s how he’s wanted to do it a lot lately. Jensen wraps an arm around Jared and reaches for his cock. He mutters, “Want you to finish before me.”

Jared tries to stop him, says “I’ll do it!” and bats Jensen’s hand away, but not before Jensen has already gotten a grip and felt what Jared is apparently trying to hide.

It’s damn on the verge of agony to pull out this close to climaxing, but he does it and flips Jared over, anger growing in him as he puts it together. Jared has been finishing himself off every time they’re in this position, or so he’d been saying whenever Jensen tried to do it for him. Jensen has a sudden, sick surety that he understands why.

“You’re not hard,” he says, accusing.

“You are,” Jared replies, his voice coquettish as he tries to pull Jensen into him again.

Jensen puts an arm out, willing himself to resist, feeling ill that he had been too horny to care enough to notice sooner. This isn’t Jared sad from time to time, longing for the ocean. If this has been every fuck Jared’s been initiating, it’s a consistent pattern, and it spells out a state of mind that is much, much more unstable than he’d allowed himself to believe Jared was in. His stomach lurches at the thought of what else he might have missed.

"You have to tell me if you don't want this. I can't be doing this if you don't want it," Jensen lectures. “Fuck, Jared. You asked for this tonight. Why would you do that?”

“Don’t be upset,” Jared says. “I’m not upset. I want you to get pleasure from me. Even when I…”

“Can’t,” Jensen fills in for him.

Jared shrugs. “It’s not you, Jensen. It’s not that I don’t want you.”

“What the hell is it, then?” he asks, pushing out of bed to get his boxers, uncomfortable having this conversation naked and still so hard it’s taking everything just to think clearly.

“I’m a body,” says Jared. “You can still enjoy my body.”

“No,” Jensen replies sharply. “How many times do I have to tell you that isn’t what this is?”

“You misunderstand me,” Jared tells him, irritatingly cool, even if his voice sounds a little withdrawn. He’s been withdrawn from everything lately. “I know you love the person I was. I know you care about that person. When I can be that person for you, it’s the best feeling in the world.” He shakes his head, resigned. “I’m not _here_. I’m not present. I’m just an empty body. But you can still love that body. If I can give that to you, I want to. I'm supposed to please you. I exist to please you. That's what I want to do, Jensen."

Jensen blinks at him a few times, his mouth hanging open as the _wrongness_ of everything Jared just said sinks into his bones and settles there. He’ll never be able to unhear it, to unsee the contradicting mix of desperation to please and a complete lack of engagement in Jared’s many-colored eyes.

“This isn’t right,” he says as the realization solidifies into an abysmal truth in his mind.

“I’m not right,” Jared confirms.

_______________________________________________________________

As soon as the semester is over, Jensen flies them back to the West Coast. He doesn’t even wait to see his students through graduation, isn’t finished grading papers, but he figures he can do that as easily from a beach house as he can from home.

It’s a last desperate Hail Mary pass to keep Jared before he frees him. And if it comes to that, well, Jensen had left Jared’s skin locked in a trunk in the attic. If he has to let Jared go, at least it’ll be quick here.

Jared is in good spirits as they move back into the little cottage they fell in love in, but Jensen knows better than to take that as a sign. Jared is hardly ever Jared these days, but Jensen doesn’t miss how goddamn hard he tries to convince Jensen that everything is fine, that Jensen is blowing things out of proportion, and the gloom that haunts him is just a passing sadness.

It’s the same ocean, the same house, the same cut of beach, the same rocks. It’s the same Jared and it’s the same Jensen. But when Jared follows him into the water for their first swim, Jensen hears those three dreaded words.

“Not the same.”

_______________________________________________________________

He leaves Jared alone for one day. Guilty at having shirked his work duties, Jensen goes to a coffee shop early in the morning, before Jared wakes up, and is gone until he’s graded each paper and sent back final thoughts, edits, advice to those he thinks should seek publishing.

When Jensen gets home, he hears nothing throughout the house, until he goes upstairs and there’s a scratching sound coming from the attic, the little pull stairs left down by whoever had last climbed them.

It’s obvious what he’s going to find, but he has no choice now. He has to see this through.

So Jensen climbs the stairs. In the attic, he finds that all the other storage has been shoved out of the way as Jared made his single-minded push to the trunk Jensen had gotten the owner of the house to let him use, promising future business if she let him store it.

Briana must have moved the trunk to the far side of the attic in order to reach something of her own, because it’s a scene of overturned antique furniture and trails on the floor where boxes had been pushed through dust. Jensen has to cross the entire length of it to find Jared.

Jared is lying on the floor next to the wooden trunk, crying hysterically as he tries to claw his way into it. It’s an especially pathetic sight, the long line of him all stretching across the floor as he tries and fails to overcome one of the many foul truths of being a selkie: if your skin is stolen, you can’t take it back. It has to be given.

It's not like Jared could have expected to be able to get into the trunk. Not like he didn't know he would be blocked from it. Jared’s the one that told Jensen about every rule of being a selkie, after all. But he’s out of his mind at the moment, no thought beyond the need to get his skin back now that he got close enough to sense it. He’s tried to get in anyway, and Jensen’s heart stops when he sees the blood and realizes Jared’s attempts to claw his way into the trunk have only worn his fingers down until they’re raw.

He seizes forward, grabbing Jared’s hands and pulling Jared until he’s sitting up in Jensen’s arms, back against Jensen’s chest. He hasn’t stopped crying.

“Jesus, Jared,” Jensen says, so worried he can’t temper his voice. “You could have just asked me for it.”

“Don’t give it to me,” Jared begs, even as he tries to launch himself at the trunk again. “Don’t give it to me, don’t give it to me.”

It’s obvious that nothing Jared says in this close of proximity to his skin is going to be reasoned, so Jensen drags them both to their feet, guiding Jared back down into the rest of the house. He sends the ladder up and pushes Jared to their bedroom. Jared is easy to lead, despite his superior size. He’s physically worn down and emotionally exhausted and it’s all Jensen’s fault.

Jensen slams the door shut behind him and by the time he turns to Jared, Jared is sitting at the edge of the bed, rocking back and forth and shaking like a wet kitten. He’s mumbling nonsense, but Jensen is able to get his attention with a few snaps in front of his face.

“Knew we shouldn’t have come back here,” Jared is saying, maybe to himself, maybe to Jensen. “I knew you’d hidden it here. Did you want me to find it? Why would you bring me here?”

He covers his ears with his hands and keeps rocking, and Jensen kneels in front of him, forcing Jared’s hands down to his lap so he can assess the damage more completely. "Where does this stop?"

Jared looks guilty, stares down at his bloody fingertips, and it clicks the moment he can't look Jensen in the eye.

"It doesn't stop, does it?" he asks. Jared is quiet, so Jensen keeps going, like pressing a bruise he knows won't heal. "You're going to kill yourself eventually."

"Jensen," Jared warns, and that just confirms it.

"You knew. You knew that's how this was going to end, and you didn't tell me? You let me take that skin and lock it away from you even though—"

"It was the only way I could be with you," Jared answers, as if that's a defense. "I made my choice."

"No," Jensen yells. Jared looks up at him, eyes wide, like he's scared, but Jensen can't calm himself for Jared's sake like he's tried so hard to do. "You fucking didn't make your choice. You made me make it. You lied to me so I would make it."

"I never lied," Jared says. "I told you it wouldn't be easy for me—"

Jensen stands, dropping Jared’s hands but gesturing to them. "You left out the part where it was going to kill you!"

"If I'd told you, you wouldn't have kept me. You would have left here without me and I would have gotten back in my skin and—and what that would have done to me, Jensen. I chose the better death."

He turns, too furious to face Jared, sick and fucking tired of only getting half-truths. "That's not true. That's not true. Why would—?"

"Because the longer I spend outside of my skin, the longer I need to return to it to stay sane. I'd already been out of it so long…Jensen, if I'd gone back into my skin, I wouldn't have come out again for so long. I would have forgotten how to be human. I would have forgotten I even could, or that I ever had, I would have forgotten…"

"Me," Jensen whispers, stumbling into the nearest seat as he realizes what Jared is trying to tell him. "If I give you your skin back, I won't ever see you again. And you," his voice cracks, but he forces himself to finish, "If you can’t hear my song, you won't even remember me?"

Jared lifts his head, squares his shoulders and narrows his animal eyes. There's a look of determination on his face that Jensen's never seen before. "I chose the better death," he says again, colder this time, and he rises to his feet. Jared walks out of the room with an air of challenge, like he's just daring Jensen to disagree with him.

Jensen can't bring himself to do that. Can't bring himself to do anything. He curls up on the bed and loses the night in his grief.

By the time he gets home from his morning run the next day, Jared has already found the skin. Jensen left it out and a part of him hoped Jared would take it and flee—that he would never have to face Jared or what he did to him again. Jared is standing by the bed, holding the skin in his arms and crying.

When he senses Jensen in the doorway, he turns to look at him, accusing. "You don't want me anymore."

"Of course I do, but." Jensen shakes his head. "I don't want to be the thing that kills you."

"I made a choice. I would have been the thing." Jared's hand curls into a fist, even as his other one brings the skin up to his face, and he closes his eyes, an expression of peace like Jensen certainly hasn't seen from him in months. "I chose to die."

"I can't," he says, biting his lips to keep them from trembling. "I cannot let you make that choice, Jared. Not for me. I can't let you die."

Jared makes a sound that isn't quite a sob, Jensen isn't sure what it is, but he understands every single thing Jared is feeling just from that broken little crack. Defeat, sadness, but the worst of it, to Jensen's ears, is the relief.

"When I first gave this to you," Jared says, holding his skin out in front of him as he turns and plants himself on the edge of the bed. "I believed I wasn't making a choice. I heard all these stories, Jensen. I'd even seen it happen a few times. Selkies who lost their skins or had them stolen, how quickly they went mad. It always ended the same for them. Within a few weeks…no one can live with that kind of madness. But I thought…I thought I loved you so much that it wouldn't happen to me."

"What changed?"

Jared lifts his head, and Jensen sees that there are tears running down his cheeks. It's the first time, in all the minutes, hours, days Jensen has spent staring at Jared, it's the first and only time he isn't ethereal, beautiful. He looks so real, so fragile, and Jensen wonders if he's been mishandling something delicate all this time, trying so hard to hold onto it when Jared wasn't supposed to be his. He had been so sure when they first met that he was the breakable one. It never occurred to him that Jared needed his tenderness more than he needed Jared’s.

"Not that," Jared says, fat, ugly drops of salt water rolling down his cheeks. "Never that."

"You said weeks." Jensen sits next to him but doesn't face him directly. "You said within a few weeks. It's been months since you left with me."

"I really was fine at first. I was just so happy to be with you. Sure, I felt the ocean calling me, but I could ignore it. It was easy to ignore. But, Jensen, it just kept getting stronger. I tried not to feel it."

"You should have told me. As soon as you knew it was going to be too much. You should have told me."

"Maybe," Jared says with a shrug. "But I didn't. I didn't want _this_." He lifts the skin as he spits out the last word. "Don't you get it? I lived for months outside the water to be with you. And…I know. I know I don't seem okay to you right now, Jensen, but I'm still nowhere near as bad as I'll get. I could live months longer with you. Isn't that better? Staying together as long as possible? You can still take it back. It's not too late to—"

"What you're asking me to do is horrible, Jared," Jensen says. "You're asking me to watch you die in _agony_ knowing I could bring you peace."

"If you could just understand how much I—"

"Don't," Jensen says, and his tone is so sharp that Jared closes his mouth. "Don't you dare act like I just don't love you enough. Because I know how much I need you. How fucking empty I was until—I don't want to lose you, either. But what would you do? If I gave you the same choice? Tell me. What the hell would you do?"

Jared makes a face like Jensen's just shoved something bitter down his throat, and Jensen leaves it at that.

"I would save you," Jared finally admits, after neither of them has said anything for several long minutes. "No matter what you told me. I would save you."

"I would choose you," Jensen says. "Over living."

Jared laughs, and it's a sad little laugh, but it comes paired with the smile Jensen doesn't remember how to live without. "Not a good situation we're in here, is it?"

"Not really," Jensen agrees, letting his head rest on Jared's shoulder.

Jared turns his face to kiss Jensen's forehead, and he whispers, "One last time?"

“Only if you really want it,” Jensen insists. “Jared, you have to want it.”

Jared holds Jensen so that Jensen can’t look away and says, “I want you so much. Even now, like this, there’s no moment I’ve stopped wanting you. You have to at least believe that. I thought I knew something about wanting until I heard your song.”

Everything is slow this time, an obvious, unspoken attempt to put off the inevitable just a few heartbeats longer. Jared goes onto his back, deliberately holding Jensen’s eyes, not needing to say anything for the statement to be clear. Jensen takes him, face to face, their lips only breaking to whisper sweet nothings that have a violent effect, the passion and adoration in Jared’s words each like a hook dragging through the meat of Jensen’s heart.

They finish together and instead of moving things along, Jensen allows himself the cowardly comfort of drifting off in Jared’s arms.

When he wakes up again, there’s no evidence left that Jared was ever there at all. It feels so much like the early days of their love that it takes him days to accept that Jared really isn't coming back.

_______________________________________________________________

The summer vacation he'd planned to share with Jared, a rerun of their greatest hits from last year, becomes a nightmare in the wake of Jensen's loss. The realization that there's nothing he can do here that won't feel more like a glaring reminder of what isn’t than anything else.

He waits a few weeks, he's not sure for what. For Jared to show up again. For the laws of Jared's nature to reshape themselves around the fact that Jensen needs them to be different. For just the flash of a little seal face that he recognizes, and, even if the man inside won't come out to say hello, for that face to recognize him.

When none of those things happen, he packs it in. Heads back to his house in Iowa three months early, not caring that he had already paid Briana a full season's nonrefundable rent. Losing money is nothing now that he's lost everything else.

Nothing improves when he gets home, because everything that made it home is gone. This had been home for years before Jared ever came into his life, the craftsman's cottage a point of pride for Jensen, who had gotten the mortgage and his first real job riding on the wave of modest success he'd had for a first time novelist.

It doesn't feel fair that even the things that had meaning before Jared have lost it, but now all he sees are the phantom imprints of how Jared had lived here: the dip on the other side of the mattress, bunches of sheet music with crossed out notes that no longer fill the trashcan, the shadow Jared will never cast again from standing by the window.

The weather even mourns with Jensen, rainstorms for weeks, then too-sunny days that seem to have no purpose but to mock Jensen's loneliness. _Pathetic fallacy_ , he reminds himself with a self-pitying laugh, because damned if that one wasn't aptly named.

Half a summer Jensen does nothing day in and day out but nurse his heartbreak. He lies in bed with the computer open, picks a random file each day and is treated to some stranger's song, the compositions Jared had devoted so much of his time to. He laughs at the tinny renditions, remembering how Jared hated them, how he always dreamed of having them played by a real orchestra. He cries at the thought that Jared's one aspiration will never come true. He's too afraid to open the file saved under his name, to learn what Jared truly thought of him.

He lets himself miss Jared with the all-encompassing devotion of someone who can't seem to do anything else. Then, he sits down at his keyboard and starts to type.

_______________________________________________________________

"A moment of watercolor in a monochrome life. That was the last time Dean ever saw Sam."

The room is suddenly heavy with quiet as Jensen's voice, the only steady sound for the last twenty minutes, falls silent. He clears his throat, the sign the audience was apparently waiting for, and a polite applause breaks out through the bookstore.

He ducks his head, never as comfortable seeing a crowd respond to his work as he should be, until finally the clapping dies down and he smiles as he says, "Thank you all so much. I really appreciate all y'all coming out tonight. I hope you enjoyed that excerpt, and I'm inviting anyone who's interested to stick around. I will be signing copies at no extra charge, and, more importantly, there will be snacks," the crowd laughs at his poorly delivered joke, a sure sign that he didn't lose them while he was reading, "That's in the next room, I think these fine gentlemen will be able to direct you on where to line up. Again, the book is _Seal Song_ , and I'm Jensen Ackles."

Jensen passes the microphone to the bookstore owner waiting to his left, and he hears as the guy—was it Rob?—begins a walkthrough of the rest of the evening's logistics. Happy to have the spotlight off him, if only for a few moments, Jensen grabs a water bottle and allows Jeff to escort him to the back area.

"You killed 'em, kid," Jeff says, slapping Jensen on the back. "Not a dry eye in the house."

"I'm never sure if they're crying because of the story or because of how bad the writing is."

Jeff barks out a laugh. "Don't be modest. It's not convincing. You have any idea the egos I have to deal with from authors whose books are selling half as well as yours is right now?"

"It's only been out for three weeks," Jensen reminds him. "It could drop off any moment."

"Could," Jeff admits. "But judging from the way your crowds are growing, it's not looking likely."

He licks his lips and nods, taking a deep breath. It's true that his name had only attracted decent turnout for the first few stops of the tour. A few prominent reviews gushing hard enough and suddenly Jensen is gazing out at standing room only every night.

A year ago, Jensen might have suspected Jeff bribed the reviewers to say all those things, but Jensen's a very different man now than he was, and the truth of it is that he knows how good this book is. He knows how raw it is; it's not like he thinks it says a whole lot about his abilities as a writer. He'd spilled his longing for Jared out on a page and somehow managed to turn that into a success.

There was a time Jensen couldn't have dreamed of anything he’d want as much as this kind of reception for something he wrote. But it took losing Jared to write the novel, and Jensen would trade the success to have his boy back in his bed in a minute.

"Mr. Ackles?" A voice cuts into Jensen's inner monologue, which is kind of a relief. It's no fun being stuck with himself these days. "We're ready for you to start signing whenever you'd like."

Rob is polite but professional, and the message is clear. Jensen had better get a move on.

"Alright," he says. "Let's get this over with."

_______________________________________________________________

Another tour stop, another swanky hotel. Jensen crashes into a mattress that probably costs as much as he paid for his first car, exhausted and hardly aware anymore of what city he's in. It's a far cry from the chain hotels the agency was putting him up in when he started, and Jensen just wishes it wasn't being wasted on someone who hardly recognizes anything but the ache in his chest most days.

He's done so many press events that he has most of the book memorized by now, brings along the manuscript more for the sake of performance than because he actually needs to read from it. His arm has a permanent cramp from signing autographs. Three straight months of this and Jensen is mostly grateful that it keeps him too busy to be as truly, spectacularly pitiful as he knows he would be if left to his own devices.

Flopping onto his back, Jensen stares up at the ceiling. Thinks about jerking off, but doesn't really have the energy or the heart, not to mention his damn arm will probably fall off if he tries it. He can't remember the last time he got off, only he can, all too vividly, still imagines he can see Jared's fingerprints where they'd dug into his biceps.

Jeff had been at the reading tonight. He'd waited through Jensen's whole bit, even though he's already had to sit through the same thing more times than anyone could stand, and joked that he was just keeping an eye on his most valuable asset.

His hand had been warm on Jensen's shoulder, his voice a low rumble as he'd leaned in to talk to Jensen. He'd offered to take Jensen out to dinner after, ostensibly as a client, but intention clear in his eyes. _Insanely hot_ had been Jared's conclusion, and Jared was not wrong.

It was a good offer, letting his agent fill him with fancy cuisine and fine wine until he was loose enough to fuck the sadness out of his bones. Jensen doesn't even think of taking him up on it. Instead he's here in a luxury hotel, the envy of the literary world. In bed by 9 P.M. Alone, alone, alone.

_______________________________________________________________

Sabbatical turns into a permanent arrangement. The success of his book comes at just the right time in a weird way. With Jensen too depressed to be a decent professor, he can now afford a full-time writing career without needing the teaching gig to help pay the bills. He sells the house in Iowa, too many memories of Jared there, and moves back to Dallas, where he at least has a support network in his mother and Danneel.

The problem with support networks is, of course, that they tend to delve into your problems whether you want them there or not.

They're cleaning up Sunday dinner, a tradition he and Danneel have kept up since Jensen moved back to town without a single missed week. Jensen is attempting to be a good friend, helping by washing the dishes she collects from the dining room, but every time he turns the water on, Danneel stomps back in with her arms loaded and 'one more thing' to say about Jensen's love life.

"I know you loved Jared. We _all_ loved Jared," she's saying now as she sets down the last of the leftovers and begins taking out foil and Tupperware. "But come on. It's been three years. It's time to move on."

"We can't all be you, Danneel. Most people's ex-boyfriends don't have their girlfriends call for gift advice."

"Aldis didn't tell Beth to call me. She called because he is my friend and she and I get along and she knew I would have a good sense of his style." Danneel crosses her arms over her chest. "He and I had a really great thing. For a summer. And then we moved on with our lives. Because it was a summer fling and that's how _healthy people_ do relationships."

"Well, I'm not moving on," Jensen tells her, for the millionth or billionth time. "I'm taken."

She brandishes a roll of aluminum foil in his face, says, "You know, he isn't coming back, right?"

He looks up at her, unable to disguise how much her words hurt him. "Please, Dani. Why don't you give me a break?"

"I gave you a break!" she insists, dragging an impeccably polished lime green nail through the leftover pool of sauce on the nearest plate and sucking it into her mouth. "Remember all those weekends I came over and we ate ice cream and watched sad movies together? And then the months and months of letting it slide when you canceled plans? How much more space can I give you? Because somewhere around year three it starts to get really hard to watch someone you love throw away their life without at least saying something every now and again."

"I'm not throwing away my life," Jensen argues. "I won a freaking Pulitzer Prize last year."

"Yeah," she says, dragging it out for a small eternity. Obviously the shine has worn off on that one, because she does not look impressed. "What was your book about again?"

"The cultural imaginary," Jensen replies. "The ineffability of love. Modern California as the haunting embodiment of the dashed hopes of American western expansion."

"Okay, professor." Danneel rolls her eyes. "It was about a man who falls in love with a guy who turns into a seal."

"Ah, right," Jensen says, as if he'd forgotten the premise of his own book. "That too."

"Now what on earth might have inspired you to link a tragic love story with a selkie myth? Gosh, not the summer you got stalked by a seal, which also happened to be the summer you met Jared. That couldn't have had anything to do with it."

Jensen continues to pretend this is all rolling off of him as he stacks plates a little too forcefully, causing them to clatter against each other. "You know, you might want to give my novel a go without spending all your intellectual effort psychoanalyzing the author. It’s actually quite an enjoyable read."

"Stop being a smartass," she says.

"It made the New York Times Best Seller list. Three times!" He smirks, watching Danneel narrow her eyes at him, but pretending, nonetheless that they don't both know she was the one to call him screaming with excitement to tell him before his agent even had the chance. "And the blurb on the back says it will, without a doubt, be one of the defining works of literature in the twenty-first century."

"Fine," Danneel says. "Make your jokes. I'm just worried about you. I mean, shit, it's not like the guy died—he fucking left you, Jensen."

"It wasn't like that," Jensen replies quietly. "You don't understand."

"Well, maybe that's because you never let me understand," she says, leaning forward to rest on the island. "You've still never told me what happened."

"And I don't plan to," he says, turning away to gather more dirty plates and start carrying them to the sink to be washed. "It's my business, not yours. So why don't you just let it go?"

"Because you're my best friend," Danneel tells him, a slight frown tugging at her mouth. "Because I want you to be happy, and instead I've watched you waste three years pining for a guy you dated for less than one. I guarantee he's not thinking about you. It's not fair that you won't let yourself care about anyone else."

Jensen concerns himself with a nasty spot of grime on a pan, scrubbing at it until he's worn through the coating, because it's easier than bearing the weight of knowing better than she does just how much Jared has moved on. Of all the things Jensen tries not to think about, this is the one he cannot confront. Any reminder that somewhere out there, Jared doesn't even miss him. Doesn't even remember.

"No one is ever going to be Jared," Jensen says, slamming the pan down in the sink. "Don't you get that? I'm always going to be lonely. You can't fill a hole like this with just anyone."

"God, you could fucking _try_ ," says Danneel.

"You think I haven't tried?" Jensen practically hisses. "You think I haven't spent every day of the last three years wishing I could stop thinking about him for one second?"

"Prove it. Let me introduce you to someone," she says. "Next Sunday. Just one time, and if it doesn't work out, I'll never bring it up again."

Jensen is about to refuse, but Danneel gives him a pretty pout and he sighs. "One blind date," he agrees. "And then never again."

She grins. "That's all I need, because I met the perfect guy for you and you're going to owe me for life."

_______________________________________________________________

If there was an official checklist on how to be Jensen's type, the guy Danneel shows up with the following week hits every box.

Tall? Check.

Great smile? Check.

Floppy hair? Check.

His name is Daveed Diggs, and he's a community organizer, running a theatre program for at-risk youth. A real do-gooder type, but not the kind with a saint complex.

Danneel excuses herself before dinner has even really started. She only hangs out long enough to have a couple of glasses of wine, make sure Jensen was going to give her champion a fair shot and establish a bit of a rapport before making up an excuse to leave so flimsy it's hardly worth the time it takes her to say it.

Jensen is a gentleman, so he takes it in good stride. He and Daveed talk over a plate of lemon-crusted salmon and mashed potatoes, and for dessert, there's individual chocolate lava bundt cakes that Daveed brought from some bakery a friend of his owns.

As the night wears on, it becomes evident that Danneel didn't just bring him eye candy. Daveed is smart and funny, too, and Jensen will grudgingly admit that the night is entirely pleasant. Under any other circumstances, he knows he would be on fire for this guy. But at the end of the night, when it's just him and Daveed, he can't stay in the moment.

The conversation winds down, comes to the moment at the end of a date that can go one of two ways: to the bedroom or to a friendly handshake goodbye.

Jensen just can't convince himself he's ready for the former. "Look, I—"

"Yeah," Daveed says, kind of laughing. "I've had a good time, but I can tell when someone isn't all there. Don't worry about it."

Jensen lets out a sigh of relief. "There's someone else," he admits. "I'm kind of getting over a break up."

Daveed nods. "I could tell. But hey, he's a lucky guy. And if you decide to change your mind, give me a call. I'd be happy to try this again."

An hour later, Jensen gets four text messages from Danneel in the span of two minutes, all demanding to know how things went. He silences his phone and turns the lights out.

_______________________________________________________________

Danneel's attempt to play cupid has the opposite of the intended effect. Rather than accepting his loss and moving on, Jensen comes out of it more sure that Jared was it for him than ever.

He takes the money he'd made selling his house, adds a few hundred thousand from his book revenue, and makes Briana an offer she can't refuse. She sells him the vacation home without putting up even token protest, "always had a fondness for you" and a hammy wink as she takes the offer Jensen makes knowing damn well he's way over market value.

It's not the house he's buying. It's proximity to memories. As suffocating as it is to live in a place that will always, in his heart, belong to Jared, it's a drug that Jensen has given up trying to kick. A part of him still hopes for a glimpse of his boy, even just the seal version, so he keeps his eyes out every time he leaves the house. Just in case.

A seal is waiting for him on the shore when he gets back from his run on the fourth day after he moves in. From a distance, he sees the brown dot on the beach and his heart picks up from more than just the cardio. He pushes himself to run as fast as he can, thinking it could be Jared.

The seal is decidedly not Jared. For starters, it's a girl, easy to tell from the size of her, and Jensen laughs, equal parts tormented and delighted that he can still hear Jared's voice so clearly in his head.

He starts calling her Ruby when she shows up a few times a week, until finally he connects the dots. He stops by the seal as he jogs to the waterline instead of just calling out a good morning greeting and waving.

She looks up at him, and Jensen knows from the intelligence in her eyes that she's no seal.

"You're a selkie," he says. She nods her little brown head. "I know who you are."

By the time he's returning from his run, the seal has been replaced by a woman. She's wearing a slick black bikini, not all that different from the shorts Jared had had on the first time Jensen saw him.

Jensen takes her in, small with big brown eyes, long brown hair, and a plump mouth worth losing sleep over. He feels no drive to put his hands on her the way he had with Jared, clear to both of them that his song is not for her and she's not here for his song, but that she's beautiful is beyond dispute.

"Genevieve."

She nods. Doesn't say anything; Jensen knew to expect that.

"Are you here because he's…?" Jensen looks out at the water, eyes skimming for what he knows he won't find. "Did Jared send you?"

She shakes her head.

Jensen can't help asking, "Does he miss me at all?"

Again, Genevieve shakes her head, but she looks deeply sad about it.

He clears his throat and forces himself to ask, "Is he happy?" even though he's afraid of the answer either way. He wants Jared to be happy. He can't stomach the thought of Jared happy without him.

Genevieve's already sad expression somehow drops even lower, her eyes getting round as she shakes her head.

"You never wanted him to speak to me," he says.

She doesn't deny it. Genevieve holds his gaze, not quite challenging, but not backing down.

He thinks of what it must have been like for the other selkies in Jared's harem, watching him disregard hallowed rules, losing him for so many months, only to get back a shadow of the man Jensen had taken from them. "You must hate me."

Genevieve shrugs, making a face like she's thinking about it before she responds. She doesn't speak out loud, but she's no idiot, and Jensen watches as she shapes her hands deliberately. She repeats two gestures over and over until he has them memorized, first mimicking holding something in her hand and dropping it, then pointing twice at the ground before pointing at Jensen.

Jensen doesn't know sign language, but he's not surprised it's one of the languages Genevieve has in her repertoire. He spends the rest of the day researching American Sign Language until he’s able to translate both of the messages.

"Lost."

"Needs you."

_______________________________________________________________

Just because he's let his life fall apart doesn't mean he's not going to keep a good home. In order to distract himself from the constant stream of Jared in his brain, Jensen decides to clean out the attic, sort which of the things Briana left behind are worth holding onto and what needs to go.

More than anything else, there's boxes of odds and ends abandoned by the tourists who passed through the house over the many years she rented it out. Jensen finds mostly crap, forgotten phone chargers, an iPod Shuffle, four packs of playing cards with increasingly inappropriate images on the back.

And then, at the bottom of one of these boxes, he sees something familiar. Something he himself had left behind, completely forgotten, but the sight of it forces him to smile.

The wind chime is in surprisingly good condition, none of the glass cracked from all its years being tossed around this box of junk. He holds it up to the light, and it begins to sway, playing its music, despite the fact that he's inside with no fan, no open window letting in a draft.

That's when he remembers the old woman he met his first day in this little beach town. Her too-knowing gaze and the way she spoke to him, as if she knew Jared was going to hear his song. As if she heard it, too.

The long slits along her arms, which Jensen had taken for open wounds. Jared had the same marks, but Jensen learned long ago that they weren't the scars that they appear to be. That's where two skins meet and fuse human into animal.

He nearly drops the chime as it hits him—she was a selkie.

His heart does not consult his mind. Jensen is down the stairs and into the street before he realizes he's wearing socks without shoes and he doesn't even remember exactly where the shop was. They never went back there again after that first day, chased away by the strangeness of the encounter and the wind chime trauma Danneel claimed to be suffering from every time she'd been trying to win an argument with Jensen that summer.

If he was thinking clearly, he would at least have grabbed his phone on the way out so he could try googling for information, but instead, all he has on him is the fucking wind chime, which is still dangling from his fingers and singing in its airy little voice.

Jensen doesn't go back for shoes or anything. He follows his instinct, goes in the direction the wind is blowing him, causing the chime to dance in his hands.

The little shop is less than a ten minute walk from his house, and when he sees it, his first thought is that time must have stood still on this one sunny block, because nothing has changed, not the sign hanging over the door, nor the chimes in the window, and to his relief, neither has the shop owner sitting stooped in her little metal chair by the door, untangling a fishing net that may very well be the same one that was draped over her lap four years ago.

"You," he says, almost accusing, as soon as he's standing in front of her.

"Me," the old woman agrees, looking up at Jensen, her eyes squinting to see him through the sunlight. "Ah, it's you, is it?"

"I know what you are," he says.

She snorts and turns her attention back to her work. "That's nice, dear."

"Please," he says. "I need your help."

The woman shakes her head, still focusing on the net instead of on Jensen. "Oh, I bet you do. But then I did warn you that there would be trouble, didn't I?" She huffs a laugh and lifts her head only partially, as if to keep an eye on Jensen and still work on untangling the mess of ropes in her lap at the same time. "So what's her name?" she asks. "The poor selkie that heard your song?"

"There's no her," Jensen says.

"I don't know how I'm supposed to help you if you won't—"

"His name is Jared."

At that, the woman's gaze shifts up to Jensen's face much faster than someone her age should be able to move. She sets her net aside and seizes Jensen's hand instead. "Did you say Jared?"

"Yes." Jensen licks his lips. "Do you—do you know him?"

"Do I know Jared?" She smiles, but the smile isn't a happy one. "I did, once. A long time ago."

"When he was a child?" Jensen asks.

She laughs. "When we both were. He was my brother."

Jensen balks. "Brother?"

The old woman lifts an eyebrow. "Does that surprise you?"

"Well, uh, you're a little…" Jensen casts around for something to say that isn't offensive and she looks like she's having the best time of her life.

"Younger than him," she finally tells him, just to put him out of his misery. "I'm his little sister Meg."

"But then, you've been out of your skin for…" Jensen shakes his head. "It's not possible."

"Some people would say selkies are impossible," she replies. "I've always thought impossible tends to be a debatable concept."

When Jensen doesn't say anything to that, she rises to her feet and gestures for Jensen to follow her somewhere less public. "How is my big brother?"

"I…I don't know," he admits. "I haven't seen him in years."

"Hmm," she responds. "Yes, well. I knew from the moment you walked in here. You wouldn't be an easy fix like most boys, no no. Your song was much deeper than that. Much sadder, for you and your selkie."

"You could hear it?"

"Not the way I might have when I was young." She sighs longingly. "I haven't heard a person's song in decades. But I still tend to be able to tell, especially around here. People gravitate towards chimes that make songs similar to their own. The one you picked was almost beyond help. I wish it hadn't been for poor Jared to answer."

"He loved my song," Jensen whispers.

She nods. "Oh, I loved every song I made a chime for. Wouldn't have wasted my time on it otherwise. Doesn't mean they were all easy to listen to."

"You make chimes to record people's songs," Jensen says, his heart giving a leap at the family resemblance, at the fondness he feels remembering Jared giving every moment that he wasn't focusing on Jensen to the same task. "Jared composed music."

Meg smiles at that, and it makes her look young, gives Jensen a glimpse into how radiant she must have been as a selkie. "Did he? Yes, that sounds like him."

"I don't understand," Jensen says. "Why are you talking about him like you haven't seen him? If you've been here this whole time—Jared never mentioned a sister."

By now, Jensen has followed Meg through the back room of the shop and up a small staircase. The landing isn't quite a second story, but it's a small attic loft tucked above the shop, and it's covered floor to ceiling with knickknacks like the ones sold in the store downstairs.

"I suppose he wouldn't have," she says, sounding a little put out. "It a very hard thing for our harems, losing one of our own. It doesn't happen often. I broke rules and I left and I can't imagine that was any easier on them than it was on me."

"But you're right here." Jensen watches as Meg takes a seat on a low couch and follows suit once she's settled. "You've been right here the whole time. Why didn't you at least go down to see them?"

"No selkie would ask such a question," she says. "I can't expect you to understand. Not being able to speak to your own kin. The torture it is to step into the sea and not be a part of it. Feeling separate from all the life in the water, like one little human intruding on a whole other world."

Jensen nods, repeating the words he heard Jared speak so many times. "It's just not the same."

"No, it isn't," Meg agrees. She sighs. "I made a choice. I won't play victim. I severed myself from my second skin. But I couldn't bring myself to return to the water, or to visit the family I left behind."

He's quiet, watching her as she absently begins to skim her thumbs up and down the slices on her arms, the way a person might try to rub themselves to stay warm.

"My poor idiot brother," she says fondly after a long silence. "Obviously didn't learn from my mistakes. Went and spoke to his human." She tsks and shakes her head. "Jensen, I haven't seen Jared since…since I was a pretty, young little thing."

This time, Jensen knows better than to wonder how she knows his name. It irks him a bit, thinking of how much Jared learned from his song. Somehow, it didn't feel like a violation when Jared could read him, but this is different. Even if she didn't hear his song, she was obviously able to glean plenty about him from whatever selkie insight she still has.

Perhaps she senses his discomfort. As if in an effort to share as much as she's taken, she holds her arms out to show Jensen the marks. 

"How?" he asks, taking her wrist in his palm and trying so hard not to think of the way Jared would smile when Jensen kissed him there. "How can you possibly have lived this long outside of the water?"

Meg frowns and snatches her arms back. "Why should I help you? How do I know you aren't just trying to trap him?"

"Please," Jensen begs. "Look at me. Do I look like I'm lying?" She does, and Jensen keeps his eyes locked on hers. "If you can see or hear anything about me, you must know how much I love him. I can't imagine my tired song says anything else. I'd give my life just to see him again. Just to see him, in either form. Just to have him remember me."

She looks disappointed, either in Jensen or in the whole situation. "You took him from the ocean, didn't you?"

"I didn't know," Jensen confesses. "He gave me his skin, I didn't steal it. I didn't know how much it would hurt him. I didn't want to know. I just needed him so much. He gave it to me and I didn't question it."

"Foolish boy, my brother." She bites her cheek and tilts her head, like she's still reading Jensen, testing his answers to make sure they hold up. "How many days?"

"Days?" Jensen repeats. "He lived with me outside his skin for eight months."

"Eight months?" Meg draws back from Jensen as if he just attacked her. "No selkie could live away from the sea that long. The longest I've ever heard of any surviving is six months and she—it didn't end well for her. How could Jared have survived that?"

"I don't know. I don't know how any of this works. He said—he told me he thought he loved me enough to never have to go back, but he was so lost. I had to return him. I couldn't bear to watch him fade away." Jensen wipes at his cheek and hopes Meg didn't see the tear. "I can't bear this either. It's been years. You thought I was lonely before I knew him, but it was _nothing_ compared to what it feels like to have lost him."

She looks him square in the eye. "You came to ask me for something. So ask."

"Tell me how you're alive. Tell me how you're sane." He takes her hand and squeezes it. "I promise not to trap him. I would never do anything to hurt him, but he said he wanted to be with me. I just need to know how a selkie can live like this."

"I haven't been a selkie in nearly a hundred years, Jensen." When that makes Jensen's face contort, she continues, "You see how much older I am. I'm a human now."

"But how?" he asks. "How can you just decide to be human?"

She smiles, tossing her hair over her shoulder like a much younger woman would to flirt. "I heard a song once, a song just like yours. I met a man, back when this town was just a few little cottages pioneers built. I loved him desperately. I spoke to him, just to know what his voice sounded like. Our harem was furious. Your Jared—oh, if I could get my hands on him now. He was so upset with me for speaking to a human. Now he's gone and done the same damn thing."

Jensen laughs. "If it helps, he seemed pretty annoyed with himself about it. At least at first."

She seems lighter when she answers, "My husband was a clever one. And the women around here used to know all kinds of things, things we selkies don't even know. His mother taught him how to catch one of us. Not steal our skin. How to truly catch a selkie. He made a special net and he captured me in it and," she spreads her palms out, showing Jensen the matching seven pointed star tattoos he had only vaguely taken note of the first time he met her, "This changed me. It took away my second self. Made me fully human, so I could be with him, but never be with the ocean again. What he did to me—it's a terrible thing, Jensen. I gave him permission. I wanted him to. But it's not an easy thing to ask of someone."

"I don't want Jared to change," Jensen says. "I love that he's a selkie. I know how happy the ocean makes him. I could only dream of making him that happy."

"It would have to be his choice," she says, expression stern. "That's all I ask from you. You can't do this to him unless he agrees to it."

Jensen's heart drops. "I can't get him to agree. I fucked it up. I took him from the ocean while he was still a selkie and when he returned—"

"He's wild now," she guesses.

Jensen nods. "He said he would be an animal. That he wouldn't change again—not for anybody. He'd never hear another song. And now I can't ever have him back."

"Eh," she says, shrugging.

Jensen lifts his eyes, angry. "Eh?" he demands. "That's your response?"

She purses her lips, letting Jensen suffer for a few more long seconds before she teases, "I know something you don't know."

"Tell me," he says. "I'll buy every wind chime in your store."

She lets her head fall back on a laugh and then she gives Jensen a frisky look. "How true have you been to my brother since he returned to the sea?"

Jensen blanches, not really wanting to discuss his sex life, or absolute lack thereof, with anyone, let alone with a nice old lady, let alone with a nice old lady who also happens to be Jared's little sister.

"It's important," she assures him. "I'm not just trying to pry."

"I haven't," he says, feeling his entire body, up to his ears, burning bright red. "I haven't been with anyone since."

"Not even a kiss?" she asks.

"Almost. I tried." He shakes his head. "It felt like cheating. Worse than that, it felt like…I don't want anyone else. I can't make myself want anyone else. If I could, maybe I wouldn't be so damn lonely. But Jared was all I ever wanted."

"Good," she says. "That means there's still hope, then."

"What?" Jensen asks. "You're not making any sense."

"Jared is wild now, it's true. There are songs out there he might have heard, had he not lived outside the water so long, people he might have gone to. But the creature he is is too far removed to hear weak songs like that. There's only one song strong enough to call him."

"Mine?" Jensen guesses. He looks down at his lap. "But I had him already. I blew it. He got back into his skin after we'd already been together. He'll never hear my song again."

Meg grins, her teeth smoothing over her bottom lip as she shakes her head. "No one has ever survived as long out of water as Jared did, and not many humans stay completely true once their selkies have left them. So it doesn't happen often. But if you truly haven't been with anyone, your song is still his. It's not easy, but it's possible."

“I could really make him hear my song again?”

She nods. "You'll have to time it right. You'll have to be in great distress for your song to be strong enough to reach him. And you'll need one of these." 

Jensen watches her turn in her seat, reaching back enough to grab something. It's another net, but this one looks much older than the ones she'd been untangling downstairs.

"My dear husband made this himself," she says. "After we met. He worked on it for months and months while I waited for him, wondering at first why he didn't come to see me anymore, thinking he'd grown tired of me. I couldn't hear anyone else's song, he was the only one I cared about, but I thought he'd found someone else, someone he could really be with."

She smiles wistfully as she wraps the ropes around her hands and then lets them fall from her fingers. "Then one night he showed up with this rope he'd put his blood and sweat and tears into. The net was much larger than this then. Most of it," she spreads her palms, "is part of me now. He asked if I would be his, forever, even if it meant becoming human. I didn't hesitate."

Jensen looks around, sees no evidence of a second person living in this space with her. He softens his tone before asking, "When did he pass?"

Meg's smile slips and she turns her face from Jensen's.

"I'm sorry," he says. "If it was recent, if you're not ready to—"

"Three weeks after I gave up the sea," she says. "We'd been married for twelve days. There was a terrible storm—I used to think sometimes that the sea was angry with me for leaving. That it took him to punish me." She shrugs. "Now I think it was just bad luck."

Jensen tries to imagine that, the loss and how bitter it must have felt, giving up so much for a love that lasted so briefly. "Do you regret it?"

"I wouldn't have told you how to catch my brother if I did," she responds.

"But why?" Jensen asks. "If it bought you so little time?"

"It was a risk I took. Any risk is worth it, right? For that kind of love." She pats Jensen on the hand. "We had three perfect weeks, my sailor and I. That's a lifetime more than most people get."

Jensen nods, can't help agreeing, but his stomach tangles into knots at the thought of asking Jared to make a sacrifice like that, to risk everything for him when he could die the next day.

Accepting that Jared is lost to him, that's even more impossible. He has to at least try, offer Jared the choice and let it be his decision. Jensen's made his.

"Teach me what I need to do," he asks Meg.

Jared's sister smiles with the same dimples Jensen fell in love with, and a century of lines seem to disappear from her face.

For the first time since finishing his book, Jensen's life has a purpose.

He wakes every morning and runs, then takes his materials out to the beach, where he sits and talks to Ruby as he creates loops and tightens them, a wide net slowly growing out. Sometimes he visits Meg all day, laughing at the stories she tells about Jared in his youth, sharing his own memories of the man he became after she left. She looks on approving when he's on the right track, slaps at his hands and repositions his fingers if he's getting sloppy.

It's not fun and it's not easy, but it is steady, centering to finally have a goal, and at the end of it, the possibility of true completeness again. Jensen remembers for the first time since Jared left what it is to feel happiness and hope.

He works and he waits and he watches the clouds. He knows what he needs to make Jared hear him.

_______________________________________________________________

Jensen buys a boat just to wreck it.

It seems like a shame, in all honesty, taking a perfectly good vessel out to sea in these conditions, but a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.

Jensen's radio is screeching a storm alert, directing all ships to immediately return to port. Instead of complying, Jensen, who doesn't know a damn thing about sailing, is proving himself very capable at sinking.

It takes less than an hour for the winds to overturn him. Jensen hits the waves as they shatter the _Impala_ into more pieces than a boat should be in, ideally. He watches this all with a sort of weird detachment. It was the plan, after all, but the plan has a better chance of getting him killed than anything.

 _Well,_ he thinks as a wave shoves him under, _too late to change my mind now._

The water is bitterly cold and the current is unforgiving. It occurs to Jensen only after he's been pulled under that he never was an especially strong swimmer. Having a net in his hands doesn't really help his chances.

Good. If he isn't on the brink of dying, none of this is going to work.

Instead of focusing on holding his breath, figuring out which way is up and swimming in that direction as much as possible, Jensen surrenders to a memory:

Jared standing tall, almost naked, a storm even more violent than this one raining down on him. And Jensen running out, trying to help him. The heavy spell that he was under, the need to touch. Jared's voice and the way it broke him. The first time he met his selkie face to face, human skin on human skin.

It's a good way to go.

The shifting of the tide jostles him so much that Jensen doesn't realize there are arms wrapped around him, pushing him to the surface, until he hits the crest of a wave and his lungs fill instinctively, desperate for oxygen. It's only then that he realizes he was drowning. It's only then that he realizes he's been saved.

It's his heart that tells him what saved him.

"Jared?" he asks.

The strong body holding him pushes forward, and there's no response until Jensen feels sand scraping his knees and suddenly he's crawling onto the shore, still gasping for breath.

"You idiot," he hears as a body slams into him, pulling him farther up onto the bank. Jensen feels overwhelming joy, despite the anger in Jared's voice. "Were you _trying_ to drown?"

Now on his back, Jensen is finally able to get a glimpse of Jared looming over him, checking him for injuries. He gives Jared a cocky grin and tries to sound self-assured, but his voice is hoarse from all the saltwater he swallowed, and he ends up coughing for several seconds before he manages, "Trying to get rescued, actually."

"I could kill you," Jared yells, directly into Jensen's face. "I could fucking kill you."

"You could," Jensen admits. "But then you just wasted so much effort saving me."

Jared puts one hand on each of Jensen's shoulders and shakes him hard. "What were you thinking? What the hell were you—?" He breaks from his anger briefly to pull Jensen into a tight hug, and his voice is so much softer, worried, as he begins to stroke his hand through Jensen's wet hair. "What were you thinking? You could have died. You almost died. I almost didn't hear it in time."

"You heard it," Jensen says, turning his face to press his lips against Jared's neck. He tastes like everything else around them—salt—and Jensen decides it's his favorite flavor. "I had to be at risk for it to work. And it did. You heard me, Jared. You remembered me."

"Yeah, baby," he says, pulling away from Jensen enough to get a look at his face. "I remember you. Fuck, Jensen. I remember you."

Jensen can't tell if Jared is crying or if his face is just covered in rain. Come to think of it, Jensen isn't really sure if he's crying or not, all he can focus on is Jared. Jared saved him. Jared is here and Jared remembers.

"Do you still love me?" Jensen asks.

Jared laughs, exasperated, and lets his head drop. Jensen realizes then the absurdity of their situation as he listens to Jared hysterically cracking up in his ear.

His selkie is lying over him, still submerged in his seal skin. His entire bottom half appears to belong to a seal. Jared didn't have time to fully remove it before grabbing for Jensen and pulling him to shore. 

The weather alone should be enough to shelve a conversation like the one Jensen just began, and Jared’s response is the rational one, "Are you kidding me right now?"

"I know," Jensen says, rolling his eyes a little. "But I swear it's important. Do you love me?"

"Of course," Jared replies. "Even when you're a moron."

"Do you still want to be with me?"

Jared's expression loses its mirth. "You know I would give anything. You know how hard I tried."

"I have a way," Jensen tells him. "But. It's…Jared, it's not perfect. You would have to give up a huge part of who you are. You would have to become human."

"I tried," Jared says, loosening his hold on Jensen. "Why don't _you_ remember?"

Jensen lifts his hand, pulling up the net that tangled around him not long ago, made it impossible to swim against the storm he'd been thrown into. But he held onto it. He didn't lose the damn net.

"I could die tomorrow," Jensen says. "If I do what I came here to do, I could die tomorrow and it won't change a thing. You'll be stuck. Human. You'll age like one of us, without me. And you won't ever be able to shift again."

"I don't care," Jared says. "I tried to die to be with you. You wouldn't let me."

"You could live. One fleeting human life with me. However long that gets us. But you have to promise me it's what you want."

Jared scoops Jensen into his arms and pulls him hard against his chest. When he kisses Jensen, Jensen remembers what it feels like to be alive.

"I was nothing," Jared whispers when he breaks away. The rain and the wind rage on around them, but in Jared's arms, the elements have stilled, as if Jared is the eye of this storm. "All these years, I was just an animal. I couldn't remember you. I couldn’t even miss you. But everything that made me me was missing. I need you so much more than a seal skin. So much more than a thousand years alone."

That's good enough for Jensen.

He lifts his arms and wraps the net around Jared. The ropes begin to glow a soft blue, tightening until they're pressing against Jared’s skin, and then disappearing in it. Jared gives a quick cry of pain and holds his palms out as all of the energy focuses there, burning into an almost blinding blue light and sinking down.

As he changes, the clouds above them stop pouring down rain, the sea's waves relax until they're no longer beating against the shore. Jared's palms glow only a few seconds longer than the rest of him, until the light burns out. 

Jensen is left holding each of Jared's hands in his own, and all that remains of Jared’s past are two long cuts down his arms, mirror images of a seven pointed star burnt into each of his palms, and the empty skin of a seal Jensen once loved curled on the sand by Jared's feet.

Jared looks down at Jensen with a mystified expression after he finishes inspecting his new tattoos, and his slanted eyes hold Jensen's gaze. He doesn't look any different, but Jensen can tell somehow. Jared is human now. Jared is his.

Jensen says, "Caught 'ya."

**The End.**


End file.
